virtual team meeting notes - cesp.rutgers.edu · jerry discussed the idea of systematizing...

Professional Learning Research Alliance

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Virtual Team Meeting Notes

December 2, 2015

Meeting Goals and Agenda

Meeting Goals:

1) To connect in meaningful and productive ways (i.e., exchange information and experiences) with fellow PLRA members, 2) to gain insight into professional learning initiatives in Maryland from the state perspective, and 3) to reflect and look forward to the work of PLRA in 2016.

Agenda: 11:00 – 11:10 am Welcome, Meeting Goals, and Agenda 11:10 – 11:20 am Connections 11:20 – 11:55 am MD Professional Learning (including a discussion about personalized professional

learning, focus on master teachers, and use of social media as way to leverage limited resources, and statewide online learning communities)

11:55 am – noon Learning Forward Presentations 12:00 – 12:15 pm Reflections 12:15 – 12:30 pm Looking Forward to 2016

Attendees included: Angie de Guzman (Maryland State Department of Education, MSDE; MD); Cathy Pine (New Jersey Department of Education; NJ); Cecilia Roe (MSDE; MD); Cindy Blitz (RELMA); Daniel Capozzi (MSDE; MD); Dessi Kirova (RELMA); Donna Carey (Valley View School District, VVSD; PA); Dori Alvich (Monroe Township School District, MTSD; NJ); Gina Constantini (VVSD; PA); Jean Vasilko (Greater Johnstown School District, GJSD; PA); Jennifer Mitchell (Mifflin County School District, MCSD; PA); Jerry Zahorchak (RELMA); Laurie McConnell (MTSD; NJ); Mary Robinson Cohen (Roosevelt Public School, RPS; NJ); Mike Kozak (MTSD; NJ); Michael Vuckovich (GJSD; PA); Morgan Englehardt (VVSD; PA); Rob Heinrich (GJSD; PA); and Sherri Fatovich (MTSD; NJ).


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Cindy welcomed all existing and new members and reviewed the goals and agenda for the meeting.

All meeting attendees (including, among others, founding members – Mike Kozak, Laurie McConnell, Cathy Pine, and Mary Robinson Cohen as well as new members from MSDE, VVSD, and MCSD) introduced themselves and showed enthusiasm for welcoming members from Maryland as well as those bringing special education expertise. Unfortunately, we had no Delaware representation at this meeting. Cindy then welcomed Angie De Guzman, Cecilia Roe, and Dan Capozzi from the Maryland State Department of Education to PLRA and thanked Angie and the entire MSDE team for agreeing to present on their professional learning work in MD. Cindy then turned over the meeting to Angie!

Angie started the discussion by providing some background about professional learning in MD which began with the Race to the Top grant which included summer academies in which teams from every school in MD came together at various locations throughout the state to learn about implementing college and career readiness standards. A part of planning for and implementing those academies included having a professional learning team. As a result of Race to the Top, they had 7 people on their team that planned anywhere from 11 academies to 5 conferences over the course of 5 years. In addition as part of the Race to the Top grant, they had a cadre of master teachers who were trained by MSDE content specialists on the college and career readiness standards including what implementation looked like. Those master teachers were the ones that actually delivered information across the state for the academies and conferences. After the grant ended, they were able to create positions and that left them with two specialists and their director who would have been there regardless. Even though an office of three, they are trying to keep up the momentum that started with the Race to the Top grant.


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Cindy pointed out the incredible amount of work that is generated from that office of three. Their website can be found at the following url: https://msde.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_552_1&content_id=_68190_1.

Angie then discussed the diversity of Maryland as a state. There are 24 school districts and among those districts there is a wide variety. Montgomery County is their largest district which has 209 schools. One of their smaller districts is Kent County which has 7 schools including 5 elementary, 1 middle, and 1 high school. To get across the state from East to West, it’s 6 hours (from mountains to the eastern shore); from North to South which also takes about 6 hours as well – there are cities – such as Baltimore City in the heart of MD – and then they have Garrett County in the mountains which is very rural and the same as their eastern shore, also very rural. In addition, Montgomery County surrounds DC and they have that diversity in that whole section as well. MD has local control so the 24 districts are very diverse in what they are doing as well. They do not mandate professional learning hours throughout the state; only requirements are through their certification office where teachers must earn additional credits within 5 years in order to maintain their certification. Angie then mentioned how this seems to be different from other states in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Cindy then briefly mentioned the comparison of the number of districts, schools, students, and teachers across our region as seen in the slide above. From 24 districts in MD, for example, to 795 in PA. In NJ, although local control similar to MD, there seems to be more directives/requirements for professional learning. Cathy Pine mentioned how NJ does not require any number of PD hours connected to certification but they do have an hourly requirement for teachers

https://msde.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_552_1&content_id=_68190_1


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annually (20); and then other hours for planning – for teachers, principals, and superintendents – everyone needs to have a personalized plan. Jerry discussed Act 48 for teachers and Act 45 for principals in PA – graduate level credits or taking hours under either Act to continue certification. In PA also, all PD hours must be approved at the state level (in NJ, this is at the district level, for comparison) although district-driven. Mike Kozak mentioned that Cathy Pine (NJDOE) is currently reviewing the requirements in NJ and he asked to make a comparison with MD and PA and the requirements in those states. Cathy explained that there are items required from the state legislature mainly in health and safety (e.g., bullying, suicide prevention training, identifying dyslexia, etc.) – these are things that fall outside of what we think about in relation to teaching and learning but are still very important. The legislation has evolved over the years and it’s very complicated to ensure that all groups that need the training receive the training in the correct timing. NJDOE is working to understand how districts are dealing with these requirements and how they might impact resources and the potential impact systemically. Jerry also mentioned that in PA, they get the mandated training above the requirements and indicated that they can be cumbersome as well. Cecilia added onto what Angie said about MD in that the certification office at the state-level is a separate office from the special learning office and the teachers have to get a master’s degree within 10 years and for that master’s degree they can get an equivalency but for that master’s the coursework has to be college coursework. The 6 credits that they get every 5 years that Angie mentioned can be PD credit through state approved courses, it does not need to be college coursework. MSDE wrote in the chat – that the counties are their districts. Cindy mentioned the Intermediate Units (IUs) in PA as organizing units for the large numbers of districts.

Angie continued by discussing the fact that given there are only 24 districts (even though locally-controlled with own initiatives and own ways of doing things), this small number allows the state to bring them together monthly, for the most part, superintendents and assistant superintendents, so they are able to talk to each other. They have more collaborative effort especially with the college and career readiness standards.


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As mentioned previously, MSDE is trying to keep the momentum going with the meetings and conferences. This is the first year without the funding and they sat down as a team and asked themselves what they wanted to accomplish understanding that they cannot mandate initiatives while providing support to the districts. There are several things they are doing including adopting the Learning Forward Standards in Professional Learning as well as focusing on 3 initiatives including: 1) state-wide learning communities (in early stages); 2) resources (mentioned that NJ launched yesterday, December 1, 2015, their resource exchange – super exciting for MD as they have worked with NJ on this and will now begin their work to develop a window for MD educators that will connect with NJ resources); and 3) recognizing personalized professional learning (examples might include webinars, twitter chats, getting together in their own PLCs) – these things happening already so they are looking at how they can recognize educators that are taking the initiative themselves. The way they have envisioned this working is by first bringing educators together in state-wide learning communities and have them identify issues they are interested in addressing; that they would be able to access/utilize the resources/resource exchange; and, finally, that they would document it through the MD PD system. MD has over 400 master teachers who had been part of the Race to the Top cadre. MSDE is currently reaching out to them through calls to action, emails, etc. to help with initiatives that MSDE is running (the idea is to have a network of master teachers). The master teachers volunteer to conduct webinars and other requests from MSDE including sharing ideas about important topics to cover as well as providing the classroom perspective and expertise. Last year, they had their first edcamp in MD at their state building. It turned out very well and seemed valuable to educators across the state. This past November they conducted a ‘Playdate’ which involves bringing educators together like an edcamp or unconference, however, this allowed them time to learn how to implement the technology. Educators walked away with positive ideas. They have also continued to provide webinars with master teachers as well as other teachers throughout MD. One of their biggest challenges has been getting down to the school level and while the master teachers have helped, they have also found social media to be a tremendous resource. They have a principals’ email that goes out every few weeks; also have an educator email sign up; and the resource exchange (will be launched soon). They use twitter as well. Jerry discussed the idea of systematizing professional learning and the portal in PA as an example of this. Then, using the IUs and districts to ensure that everyone has enough training on the portal to be able to use it efficiently and effectively. Cathy mentioned that she appreciated MD’s use of master teachers across the state and asked how they define master teacher. Master teachers had to apply through their district beginning in 2011 and this continued over the 5 years. It was valuable that the district recommended the teachers for the program (so, the district did not select or forward all teachers who applied, only those that they felt were qualified). They had to have a master’s degree and meet some


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other requirements. During the grant, the master teachers were paid to participate (were trained and then provided the training to participants across the state in the academies), however, they are no longer paid although the state is looking for ways to ‘compensate’ them in some way including a thank you and certificate. Also starting to reach out to the different content offices within MSDE to break down the silos (these offices did train the master teachers, as mentioned in the ‘chat’) and work in collaboration with them. Also reaching out to affiliates such as ACSD, Learning Forward, REL to see if they can assist as well (trying to leverage all of the possible resources around them). The program they use for the newsletter is ‘Smore’ – free for basic version but need to pay for version with analytics which are incredibly valuable. For the edcamp at MSDE mentioned above, they had about 120 register and then 90 attend. Because of limited space, they did pick names at random through a lottery versus first come first serve. This year, they are having an edcamp in February 2016 and are expanding to 4 locations to help with space and travel. They also are holding a virtual edcamp using the webex platform in January 2016. For the ‘playdate’, they were focused mostly on web 2.0 tools and they worked with their office of instructional technology. They had 5 topics that educators could explore and resources for each – and also included tutorials. They have been using social media as well as the principal newsletter to spread the word about their events. They also send emails directly to the master teachers and affiliates. Part of what they are doing with their twitter account is retweeting from schools/districts to celebrate that work as well as to show that they are listening.

Celebrating educators that are personalizing professional learning – they have created (in-house) this dashboard where educators will be able to log in and indicate activities that they have participated in to receive points. After 15 points, an email goes to their principal and asks if they approve them. During roll-out, they will emphasize the fact that this is not just a check off list but rather part of an ongoing plan of professional learning. They are starting this work with a book study on the above mentioned book on personalized PD. This system is also an online portfolio for teachers and can also level them up. The book is going to launch the program.


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They want to bring educators together throughout the state to form PLCs but want to be able to monitor it and help to sustain it. Cindy mentioned that there are lots of things to think about around the online statewide PLCs including the platform, structure, resources, facilitation, are goals defined or how will be defined, how needs defined, how grouping occurs/matching of educators, guidelines of when and how often meet, where place specialists, consider special ed, and how measuring impact of these (process evaluation possibly), etc. Greater Johnstown indicated that they appreciated all of the ideas presented so far – lots to think about - mentioned the idea of a teacher showcase and further celebrating the work going on in the classrooms. Any way we can maximize the effectiveness of PLCs, we need to take advantage of – as time and communication are always issues. Mike K. echoed GJSD’s enthusiasm for the presentation and discussed the need to think about how we can best communicate through the use of social media and beyond. NJCore (http://www.njcore.org/) – resource exchange - has lots of resources – and should be ways to be able to communicate through that channel. The ultimate goal of the resource exchange is that many states will have windows into it and share resources.

MSDE will be presenting at the Learning Forward conference next week as well as Cathy and Dessi. Cindy will be presenting during a Fast Forward session on the online PLC literature review and suggested that during the next PLRA meeting each of these people who are presenting/attending share back some lessons learned from the conference. The next few slides discuss what we’ve accomplished and topics focused on (range of topics but related and build on each other) as an alliance over the past year or so. Cindy stated that to her the most important things the PLRA team has accomplished include collaboration, trust, and accountability to the group. As Angie and others have mentioned, it’s important that we celebrate our successes. Having Maryland, Delaware, and others join recently is testimony to how great you all are and how willing you are to share your insights, successes and failures.


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The following slides also indicate the projects finished and in progress and Cindy discussed these briefly including the pre survey prior to large scale PLC implementation as well as a post survey – and indicated that if any districts beyond West Chester and Greater Johnstown are interested in these that they should feel free to reach out to her. Cindy finished by saying that the continued learning and growing occurring within the team is indicative of our being a PLC (of a sort) ourselves. She ended with a bit of housekeeping including when the cross-RA meeting would be (weekends seem off the table, October is the NJ School Board Association’s meeting – so need to be careful with this, last week in August is first week of school in PA and 3rd week in August is when teacher’s come in). This year, year 5 of the REL, will focus on dissemination as well as continued opportunities for Technical Assistance – and our team meetings. The PLRA team has a google plus community and a folder within google drive with our resources. Cindy also indicated that she would send out a survey to gauge individual’s interest in specific working groups and future meeting topics – in addition to a doodle poll to schedule our next virtual meeting. Cindy thanked all participants for attending with a special thanks to Angie and MSDE for sharing their work!


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virtual team meeting notes - cesp.rutgers.edu · jerry discussed the idea of systematizing...

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