Getting Ready

Getting ReadyMake a name tent

You are unique in your approach to your learning. Print or write your first name and last name – uniquely. Let your name card say something about YOU as a leader of learning.

1

Andrew

TaylorChristine

Lowden

BECOMING A LEARNING SCHOOL

Dr. Christine Lowden

Dr. Andrew Taylor2

I am concerned that too few teachers experience the quality of professional development and teamwork that would enable them to be more effective each day. We must make sure that what we know is essential to good teaching is embedded in the life of all teachers.

Stephanie Hirsh, Executive Director, NSDC

3

GOALS FOR THE WORK

Identify core elements of a learning school in which all engage in collaborative professional learning to improve student learning.

Develop strategies for transforming your school into a learning school or extend and refine your current work to increase its impact.

Acquire tools to assess your school’s progress toward becoming a learning school.

Clarify roles of the stakeholders in a learning school.

Troubleshoot issues that are perceived as barriers to collaborative professional learning.

4

What Makes You Tick?

Materials: Leprechaun, marker• Individually answer the following questions on

your gingerbread person as it relates to becoming a learning school. Do not share at this point:

– Head: What question(s) do you have that are important for today’s work?

– Stomach: What gives you indigestion about building a learning school?

– Eyes: What is important for you to see in a learning community?

– Ears: What must you listen for in a learning community?

– Hands: What expertise do you offer to collaborative learning?

– Heart: What is your core belief on the connection between school improvement and professional learning?

Share your answers with your table group.5

Why Agreements/Norms

• Set roles and responsibilities• Build trust• Create structures for safety• Ensure we are efficient and effective • Provide opportunities for deep,

insightful conversations about teaching and learning

• Provide a means for self- assessment of the work of the team

6

Our Agreements

•Step up•Make room•Stay present•Collect wisdom•Listen for meaning•Assume goodwill

7

Placemat

8

What is a Learning School?Activity: chart paper, markers

Steps for creating a definition:

1. Form a group at your table with each member of the team choosing a different colored marker and spot on the placemat. Leave the middle of the chart paper empty.

2. Simultaneously, each teammate answers the following question: What are the elements of a highly functioning learning school? No talking.

3. Each individual shares their thinking with the group. No interruptions. (POV)

4. The team listens for similarities and differences and begins to create a common definition of a learning school. Place the common definition in the center. Each team will share their definition with the larger group.

9

Essential Questions to Frame the Day

• How do we advocate for and articulate professional learning that positively impacts student learning?

• How do we create the conditions and opportunities within our school and teams that advance teaching effectiveness and student achievement?

• What are the strategies that learning schools use that bring success?

10

Many teachers engage only in the macro-level professional learning. What is missing for many teachers is the micro, experiential learning that promotes transfer of macro learning into practice.

Curry and Killion,Slicing the Layers of Learning,

JSD, Winter 2009

Becoming a Learning School

11

NSDC Definition

Defining Professional Development

12

NSDC Definition:Connections to the Work of Schools

Activity 1: NSDC definition and LFNY Wiki

Read the definition and choose a passage that you feel has a major implication for the work you do.

– Record your thoughts on the right column on the wiki

Remember to save when you are done.

13

Reporting on the NSDC Definition

Compare the other group wiki pages:

What did you discover?

What was similar?

What was different?

14

A Final WordThe new definition of professional development is a moral imperative. The inequity in teaching quality and educational resources across classrooms, schools, and districts denies some students the opportunities for academic success. These inequities can be addressed through effective professional learning within schools. When schools become “learning schools,” every student benefits from every educator’s expertise, and every educator grows professionally with the support of his or her colleagues.

Hirsh, JSD , Fall 2009

15

Tool Kit

How to effectively use the book and CD

16

Tool Kit Purpose

Becoming a Learning School was created to bridge theory and practice in developing a systemic process in schools for continuous improvement through professional learning. It describes key actions needed for implementation of the definition and provides practical tools to ensure that LEARNING is an essential component of educator collaboration.

17

Becoming a Learning School Supports

• Teachers

• Teacher Leaders

• Coaches

• Principals and school administrative staff

• Central Office

• External Agencies

18

Use the book to• Develop a school-based learning

organization focused on professional learning

• Implement collaboration at any level on the continuum – – for beginning schools to expand their

understanding of collaboration– for more advanced schools to work

with targeted protocols for team work

• Assess and evaluate collaboration

19

Chapter Contents

• Self assessment: Where are we now?

• Brief narrative to describe the key concepts for learning

• Reflection questions

• Tool list with suggestions for use

• Bibliography of additional resources

20

Tool Kit Scavenger Hunt Race

Activity 2

In your group, use the Table of Contents and the Tools on the CD list to identify the chapters or tools you might reference in response to the scavenger hunt questions.

Stand up when your team is done!

21

Continuous Cycle of Improvement

22

Students achieve more when teams of educators within a school and across a district engage in continuous cycles of improvement that focus their attention on their learning needs, as defined by student learning needs, refining their

practice and accessing district and external assistance providers to support

their efforts.Becoming a Learning School, Killion and Roy, 2009

Becoming a Learning School

23

The Continuous Cycle of Improvement

The heart of Part A

24

Stages of the continuous cycle of

improvement. Team Actions

1 Examine data from student assessments (formal or informal) to identify goals for student learning

2 Set goals for educator learning and identify designs/strategies for accomplishing those goals

3 Engage in professional learning

4 Plan ways to apply knowledge and practices from professional learning in classroom practices

5 Examine student work and/or assessments and reflect on how the new practices influenced student learning

6 Decide how to refine teaching and team practices and structures

25

The Collaborative The Collaborative Learning TeamLearning Team

Activity 3: Stults Road Elementary

26

Use the notetaking guide.

Observe how the team works together.

Data

Using information wisely.

27

Beginning the Cycle:The Collaborative Conversation

• What is the evidence that we are confronted with a problem?

• What are the apparent causes of the problem over which we have control? (root causes)

• What additional data might be needed to test our root cause analysis?

28

Without analyzing and collecting data, schools are unlikely to identify and solve the problems that need attention, identify appropriate interventions to solve those problems, or know how they are progressing toward achievement of their goals. Data are the fuel of school reform.

Joellen Killion, JSD, Winter 2000

29

What are the Data?• Demographic – describes the students,

school staff, the school, and community

• Student learning – shows the results of assessment of and for learning and their impact on student learning

• Perception data – collected through surveys, questionnaires, etc. to describe what stakeholders think of the learning environment

• School Process – includes the school programs and initiatives, strategies, assessment types, practices

Adapted from Victoria Bernhardt

30

Identification of School Data

Activity 4

• Consider all the data available in your school. Brainstorm all possibilities.

• Categorize the data using Victoria Bernhardt’s data definitions.

• Be prepared to share data types to the large group.

31

DataSelf Assessment

Senteo Self Assessment

32

Lunch

Creating a Culture of Collaboration

Video

Pull out Negativity by its Roots

Those who grow healthy school cultures must root out weeds of bad culture.

35

Pull out Negativity by its Roots

Weed 1: We are not responsible for student learning.

Weed 2: We prefer to work by ourselves.

36

Pull out Negativity by its Roots

Weed 3: We must protect our territory.

Weed 4: We focus on activity rather than results.

37

Developing Strategies to Support the Culture

Activity 5: Tool 3.10, 3.11,Charts

• Scan tools 3.10 and 3.11and prepare to consider strategies that you currently use or want to use to “pull out negativity”. Keep in mind the 12 norms of a school culture.

• Create a poster to identify at least two strategies for your weed.

38

IC Maps

Evaluating where you are.

39

Innovation Configuration Map

• Includes the essential elements of the innovation

• Identifies specific behaviors of what an innovation is in practice

• Identifies those behaviors on a continuum from ideal to unacceptable

• Is both an assessment and planning tool

40

Learning SchoolIC Map Components

1.0 Comprehensive, Sustained, Intensive Professional Development– Effectiveness– Collective Responsibility– Team Configuration– Frequency

41

Learning SchoolIC Map Components

2.0 Continuous Improvement– Data Analysis– Student learning Goals– Educator Learning Goals– Multiple Designs– Interventions for Student Learning– Job-Embedded Support– Ongoing Evaluation

42

Learning SchoolIC Map Components

3.0 Expanded Opportunity for Professional Learning– External Assistance– Learning Outside the School

4.0 Evaluation of Collaborative Professional Learning

• Ongoing Evaluation

43

Learning SchoolIC Map Components

5.0 School Support for Collaborative Professional Learning– Principal Support– Teacher Leader Support– Teacher Support– Classroom Implementation

44

Learning SchoolIC Map Components

6.0 District Support for Collaborative Professional Learning– District Leader Support

45

InnovationConfiguration Map

Continuum

Level 1Ideal

Level 6Unacceptable

46

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6Work and learn together sharing collective responsibility so that each individual team contributes to the success of all students within the school

Disregard factors that influence student academic success

Self-Assessment

Activity 6: IC Map, dots

• Using the IC Map - Where is your school or a school you know on the continuum within each element? (Use the IC to make notes.)

• Post your response on the master chart when you finish.

• Hold responses as confidential and anonymous.

• Make observations with a partner about the results.

47

Connect the Dots• Work with a group to discuss challenges and

successes within the element. Alternate between successes and challenges.

• Discuss the following:

– What strategies can/do you use to strengthen this area?

– What challenges must you be aware of?

– How would you communicate the need to build capacity for the strategies?

• Be prepared to share.

48

TEAMS

Creating Effective Teams

49

50

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable and who work collaboratively and learn continuously. Lois Brown Easton

Learning teams meet almost every day and concern themselves with practical ways to improve teaching and learning. Members of learning communities take collective responsibility for the learning of all students represented by team members. Teacher members of learning teams, which consist of four to eight members, assist one another in examining the standards students are required to master, planning more effective lessons, critiquing student work, and solving the common problems of teaching. Learning Community Standard

The Team: An Overview

Teams• Identify roles and

responsibilities for the work

• Establish agreements

• Share leadership• Create, maintain a

sense of team• Understand team

development

Member Roles• Team member• Facilitator• Recorder• Timekeeper

Becoming a Learning School, Chapter 12

51

Are You an Effective Team?

52

Assessing Team Performance

Activity 7: Tool 12.4 and 12.5, partner

• Identify a team• Use Tool 12.4 to assess your team.• Using Tool 12.5 (on CD) as a reference.

– identify two strategies or supports that would assist the team.

• How similar is this team to other teams in your school?

53

54

Designs for Professional Learning

55

Designs for Learning

Activity 8: Chapter 11

Consider the following statement: “When team members know of multiple designs for using their collaborative time to meet agreed upon goals, they are far more likely to use time effectively.” What designs are teams you know of using?

1. Skim Chapter 11

2. Using Table 11.2 identify a strategy you would like to learn more about

3. Use corresponding Tool from CD to learn more (Tool index on page 125)

56

The Balancing Act

57

Developing culture and

climate

Focusing on curriculum, assessment, instruction

Leaders of Professional Learning

Leadership development develops the capacity of educators (teachers and administrators) to be effective in leadership roles or processes, enabling leaders to work together in productive and meaningful ways that benefit student learning. School leaders need to know how to effect the changes necessary to “move the needle” on school performance.

Gray and Bishop,Leadership Development,JSD, Winter 2009 58

Central Office

Central office staff have a new role – to build the capacity of

school-level personnel to design, manage and implement

improvement efforts.Becoming a Learning School, 2009

What are the expectations for the roles of central office to lead the learning school and how do we prepare them to do the work?

59

Principal

Principals’ commitment, investment, and involvement are

essential for collaborative professional learning to succeed

within the school.Becoming a Learning School, 2009

What are the expectations for the role of principals to lead the learning school and how do we prepare them to do the work?

60

Instructional Coach

When implementing a new way of learning and working together,

schools benefit from the support of skillful coaches.

Becoming a Learning School, 2009

What are the expectations for the roles of coaches to lead the learning school and how do we prepare them to do the work?

61

Teacher Leader

Deep change in schools that improves student learning occurs

at the classroom level. When teachers work together to solve genuine problems of practice, to learn with and from each other, and to contribute to each other’s

expertise, students benefit.

Becoming a Learning School, 2009

51

Four CornersThree Things

Activity 9

• If there were three things you could do (from your role perspective) to accelerate collaboration that focuses on professional learning and student achievement, what would they be?

• Share your best ideas

63

The Learning SchoolActivity: In your Words

Based on your learning today write slogan for your “learning school” in 6 words or less.

64

Final steps…Materials: Leprechaun, marker

• Individually answer the following question on your Leprechaun as it relates to becoming a learning school.

– Feet: What steps will you take to make a learning school become a reality where you work?

• Share your answers with your table group.

65

Resources• Killion & Roy, Becoming a Learning School, NSDC,

2009• Jolly, Team to Teach: A Facilitator’s Guide to

Professional Learning Teams, NSDC, 2008• Hirsh and Killion, The Learning Educator, NSDC,

2007• Hord & Sommers, Leading Professional Learning

Communities: Voices from Research and Practice, NSDC, 2008

• Killion and Harrison, Taking the Lead, NSDC, 2006• DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, Learning by Doing: A

Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work, Solution Tree, 2007

66