Learning Forward Michigan

It’s far too easy these days to get distracted when thinking about any communication related to teachers, student learning, and schools. With the many optimistic tweeters sharing links to ideas and events that support their views, news reports of what’s wrong with schools and teachers, and entrepreneurs vying for my endorsement and selling their “one-of-a-kind” product and services, I am feeling overwhelmed by the task of prioritized meaning making. I can only imagine what my colleagues in P-12 schools are experiencing. In full disclosure, in wrestling with sorting all of the information and messages, I now believe it’s the process of engaging in prioritized meaning making that leads to relevant and powerful professional learning.

And just be clear about where I stand: I don’t yet tweet about my new found epiphanies but apparently a blog is a safe first step; I still believe in the power and difference well-supported educators can make in a place called school; and what I sell is most akin to what Hoy, Tarter & Hoy (2009) call “academic optimism” about the collective power of optimism to guide and enhance educators’ expectations for student learning and achievement. As I’ve said far too many times lately, it’s that simple and that complicated.

I recently participated in one of the Michigan Department of Education’s focus groups spending a morning with some incredibly thoughtful and engaged teacher educators and leaders to consider the current certification requirements, field experiences, mentoring, and induction programs for those learning to teach. The morning experiences triggered some ideas for me to further ponder related to how prioritized meaning making impacts professional learning:

Idea #1: There are many educators in the State of Michigan who care deeply about and are committed to the preparation of and ongoing support and mentoring for beginning teachers, but we have not often worked collaboratively to prioritize our efforts. As a 20-year veteran teacher educator directly involved in teacher preparation, novice teacher induction, and mentoring and often distracted by the daily challenges of that work, it’s been easy to lose my perspective of this larger community of practice to which I belong and share many interests and commitments. I was struck by how many in the room both acted from an experiential and academically informed position, and yet there were so few who had intentionally collaborated across institutions to both share and glean expertise in regards to preparing teachers. Sure, there were lots of people who knew one another, but not many in higher education whose routine work was integrated towards a shared common goal.

One teacher educator in particular stood out as exceptionally inspired. She spoke passionately of her own practice as deeply intertwined and intentionally connected to the work of the K-12 schools, “If there’s a district task force that relates to preparing teachers in literacy, I’m on it! I’m there walking the walk and talking the talk as I’m creating deep relationships that allow me to provide the kinds of collaborative professional learning and mentoring so that my student interns get the best possible learning experiences they can have!”  I knew I needed to know more about her motivation and inspiration, so I asked, “Why do you go the extra mile?”

To which she replied, “Parents and teachers still send their children to us in order to teach them how to become the best possible teachers they can be. This learning has to happen in schools with students and teachers along with my coaching and mentoring. I believe in the process and therefore I will do whatever I can to be the teacher educator that prepares teachers who know how to teach reading with actual students!”

Her words struck a chord in me. She was singing my commitments as well. I was not alone. Soon many others chimed in about the ways in which they too were engaged in working with teachers, schools, and districts to support and mentor student teachers, practicing teachers, and school administrators. As I listened and applauded the many individuals who were exceptional in enacting relationships focused on job-embedded, data-driven professional learning in communities of practice, it occurred to me that there weren’t examples yet shared about institutions cultivating a community of practice. I have been reflecting for several weeks now about what it would take for teacher preparation programs to systematically coordinate efforts that reflected high quality professional learning standards with a vision of a collaborative community of practice that could be flexible and adaptive to one’s context? Would this approach lead to reducing the high levels of distraction, information overload, and lack of coherence in approaches to both preparing and supporting practicing educators?

Idea #2: Learning to teach effectively is a complex and complicated endeavor for all educators from early child development programs through graduate school. Another lesson reinforced in the stakeholders meeting emerged as the 40 educators, administrators, and higher education faculty discussed the scope and sequence of programs that prepare teachers who engage all learners.  As the facilitators of the focus groups guided the groups to consider such questions about the professional learning demands of teachers of middle school versus elementary or high school and the role of schools within early and student teaching field experiences, certainty and clarity were present only when discussing what seems to be working in one’s context. While a few felt comfortable prescribing standardized approaches for all institutions and educators, some were concerned that such suggestions would lead to overly rigid mandates about the requirements for certification. Further, some believed that such requirements had lead to a tradition that has created tricky challenges when wrestling with the ebb and flow of the supply and demand of teachers and the glacial-paced change efforts in many institutions of higher education teacher preparation programs. “It’s the lack of flexibility in current certification rules that allowed alternative routes to certification and quick and dirty ongoing professional learning to occur,” pointed out one school leader from an urban school district.  Clearly change that requires holding sacred principles of learning to teach while allowing for flexibility and adaptability within the system is a scary but also attractive thought for many in this group of stakeholders.

Idea #3: Professional learning standards underscore and are mentioned as the gold standards of mentoring and induction programs, but they are not always understood as non-negotiables when structures, budgets, and personnel challenges emerge.  As I listened to passionate educators share their challenges with providing high quality professional learning directly connected to actual instructional practice using a well-scaffolded approach, I heard the pain and agony of making difficult choices. Educators were actively prioritizing how time, resources, personnel, and social capital were allocated on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. Some were at high levels of collaboratively enacting a theory of change that positioned a clearly defined view of instructional practice and the necessary professional learning as the vehicle for enacting that change. Others were isolated in their efforts to both prioritize and champion high standards of professional learning. No one believed there were quick or easy fixes when wrestling with conflicting demands on time, resources, or personnel.

Those in my smaller group and then during the larger share outs who were most outspoken about how to best mentor and support beginning teachers held clear visions of deep, collaborative relationships between teachers, schools, and teacher preparation programs. They shared well-articulated agreements, design principles, and co-constructed plans that valued educators’ voice and agency in their professional learning. Further, they were committed to a long term vision whereby all educators could continue to both receive and provide mentoring and support to one another to remain focused on instructional improvement and professional growth.

My take away from the entire experience was a renewed commitment to engaging in the larger community of practice that supports the professional learning of those learning to teach and deepening all of our practice. I recognize and am grateful for the collective academic optimism about those things over which we can change through exerting our influence. I’m convinced that the best way to do this is to be more selective when listening to the noise, messages, and ideas so that what I choose to attend to is intentionally aligned with my commitments in preparing, mentoring, and supporting educators in collaborative communities of practice. This is my professional learning standard.

– by Wendy Burke, Eastern Michigan University

As the school year comes to a close, those of us responsible for evaluating program effectiveness are living between thoughtful reflection and forward planning. Alongside central staff and my coaching & curriculum colleagues here in the Waterford School District, we have been working collaboratively to ensure goals were met, professional opportunities measured, and momentum keeps rolling into next school year, especially as it relates to our “Waterford Reads” elementary Guided Reading initiative. This district initiative was conceived out of the need to tighten up and better differentiate reading instruction within the reading workshop block as to hold all students accountable to more rigorous reading behaviors. These behaviors are designed to be gradually released to them through a scale of help, ensuring that reading independence and “making meaning” is always top priority.

https://www.waterford.k12.mi.us/pages/53381/waterford-reads

I decided to use the Standards for Professional Learning as an additional lens through which to look — both as a facilitator of professional learning and as an advocate for the standards, working to further the vision and mission of Learning Forward and our Michigan affiliate.

https://learningforward.org/who-we-are/purpose-beliefs-priorities#.V0-3SPkrJBU

I am also especially mindful of the relationship between professional learning and student results, as evidenced in the four-part fluid and flexible cycle on page three through the link below. https://learningforward.org/docs/default-source/jsd-february-2016/discover-the-possibilities-feb16.pdf

This blog entry serves as reflective notes on a collective journey, meant to capture just a glimpse of all that went into planning, preparing for, and executing the beginning stages of a multi-grade level professional learning plan with an eye on the 3rd Grade Reading guarantee.  Under each standard I chose to highlight the actions taken that best reflect the heart of that standard was met.

Standard 1: Learning Communities

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment.

• Learning communities consisted of grade level PLC teams within buildings and across buildings, district-wide professional learning sessions, and clustered buildings for day-long learning labs.
• Ongoing professional learning was supported through district-wide professional development days, building-level professional learning, grade level teams, building level sharing, cross-district learning labs, and personal/collaborative reflective learning opportunities.
• Collective responsibility is evident through regular planning and dialogue with central office staff and administration, building level literacy leaders, learning coaches and our curriculum consultant, and of course by teacher & student accountability to reading goals and progress.
• A clear and common focus was made possible through the layering and analysis of multiple data points which helped to shape a district frame of expectations for the Guided Reading initiative.

Standard 2: Leadership

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires skillful leaders who develop capacity, advocate, and create support systems for professional learning.

• Skillful leaders, identified as trained coaches, facilitated  professional learning, working alongside curriculum and literacy leaders in each elementary building.
• These leaders worked to develop capacity with all educators via professional learning sessions, learning labs, the recruitment and preparation of hosts for the labs, aligning interventionists as a PLC team to collaboratively plan for and lead professional learning within their buildings, and systematizing ongoing professional reflection, self & peer observation, and collaborative dialogue through a menu of opportunities designed to honor teacher readiness.
• As facilitators of professional learning, through research and a system of networked colleagues, we continue to advocate that the best way to learn is together in a job-embedded, reflective setting.  Here, we can set personal practice alongside a common focus and use dialogue to elevate awareness, deepen our understanding and increase our impact.

Standard 3: Resources

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires prioritizing, monitoring, and coordinating resources for educator learning.

• This initiative was introduced and committed to as the single most important priority for our elementary educators and presumably the district as a whole. It incited an “all hands on deck” call to action shifting necessary human and capital resources toward affording every administrator, classroom teacher, interventionist and student support personnel the professional learning and lab opportunities they need to grow.

Standard 4: Data

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students uses a variety of sources and types of student, educator, and system data to plan, assess, and evaluate professional learning.

• Variety of sources for student data- NWEA, DRA, running records, teacher anecdotal records and formative assessment measures, student data-tracking, goal-setting and reflection.
• Variety of sources for educator data- Self-reflection, lab reflections, end of year surveys, and peer-to-peer feedback analysis guides.
• Variety of sources of system data- PD session exit data and end of year school improvement visits and surveys to further plan for, assess and evaluate teacher needs related to professional learning.

Standard 5: Learning Designs

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students integrates theories, research, and models of human learning to achieve its intended outcomes.

• One theory of action- If we re-familiarize and train teachers in the Guided Reading instructional model while providing job-embedded professional learning with ongoing support, then teachers will be more skillful and strategic when using data to inform their reading instruction/groupings of students as well as better utilize their time with students for reading instruction and students in turn will get just what they need to grow as readers.
• Research- Units of Study and Standards from Lucy Calkins and the TCRWP/Columbia University, Carol Dweck- Mindset (Growth Mindset norms for learning), Doug Fisher/Nancy Frey- The Gradual Release Instructional Model (tailored scaffolds for prompting reading fluency and comprehension), Fountas & Pinnell- Guided Reading: The Romance and Reality, Burkins & Yaris- Preventing Misguided Reading, Moss & Brookhart- The Learning Target Theory of Action.
• Models of human learning- Job-embedded, reflective and collaborative; Administrator at the table, learning alongside teachers (Viviane Robinson- Student-Centered Leadership); Targeted focus for learning and feedback: Teacher Language & Student Behaviors; Ongoing support- variety of levels and capacities; Feedback Analysis Guide (Brookhart)- Feedback involving self and peer-reflection that is clear/precise/limited in focus and forward-thinking; Choice in PD sessions “Pick 3 PD”.
• Focus questions to pursue (Heather Wall- When Guided Reading Isn’t Working: Strategies for Effective Instruction, Journal of Language & Literacy Education): What are students doing with what they know?  Who is doing the majority of the reading work?  Are students actively problem-solving text?

Standard 6: Implementation

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students applies research on change and sustains support for implementation of professional learning for long-term change.

• This I believe is our “waiting to exhale” Standard.  There is room to grow here in researching, understanding and accounting for “change”, as well as measuring and reporting on this initiative’s impact on teacher practice and student performance.  What we know is that change takes regular, consistent effort and that it does not occur overnight.  What we have committed to is ongoing professional learning and support, planned out through the 2016-2017 school year and beyond.

Standard 7: Outcomes

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students aligns its outcomes with educator performance and student curriculum standards.

• We are currently working to create Strategy Implementation Guides to assist educators in measuring progress with School Improvement Goals around Guided Reading instruction.  The Guided Reading initiative work is centered around the Common Core Standards in accuracy, fluency and comprehension, present at all levels K-5.  Teachers and administrators have had and will continue to have opportunities to reflect on their implementation of our “Waterford Reads” Core Reading Instruction Expectations.  Professional Learning sessions will continue to be tailored to identified needs of teachers and students in order for them to be successful.

This reflection has helped me to calibrate our work to the Standards for Professional Learning, although admittedly it was not explicitly at the forefront of our minds when planning and executing this initiative.  I am quite confident that our efforts in Waterford echo the definition for professional learning offered on Learning Forward’s website as “sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused”.  While the work was fast and furious, spanning just December 2015 to present day, there is much to already be proud of.  We anxiously anticipate opportunities to celebrate with our leaders of learning and our students as gains are made, self-efficacy increases, and the trust built through collaborative efforts strengthens our resolve.

Closing with a quote from Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, “The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.” I believe we are on our way.

Heather Nuckolls
Learning Forward Board Member
Learning Coach, Waterford School District

by Lauren Childs, President, Learning Forward Michigan

One of the joys of classroom teaching are moments when I hear a learner (young or old) offer a description to others, using language that reflects collective growth for our profession. The learner is focused on articulating a personal reflection or sharing an experience through story. Often, however, I am also focused on his or her choice of words as a mirror to how our professional learning is created, nurtured, and expanded. Here are three examples that come to mind:

“One of our school-wide goals for professional learning next year is…”  This teacher-learner is describing to colleagues in a cross-district meeting how she is part of a middle school teacher-led leadership team planning for opportunities the staff will have in the next school year. She is explaining the leadership team’s goal of creating a set of year-long study group options and how each member of the staff will choose to join one. She details how the options were identified from a staff survey and then checked against student performance data in an effort to engage study groups that prioritize educators’ self-identified interests with the immediate needs of the students they serve. She expresses the energy that is buzzing among her colleagues, just from the planning stages—from the opportunity to create their own learning and to seek out the resources that will best support them in supporting their middle-schoolers.

And the joy for me, as her facilitator in the moment, is observing that this teacher may not, and nor might it matter, be cognizant of the recent journey our field is on to move beyond the language of professional “development” to professional “learning.” There has been an intentional shift in our jargon to mark an intentional shift in our collective understanding of the learning that will help teachers truly offer their best teaching to all our students. I know the path is long and the knowing/doing gap is wide, but I find hope in our Michigan Standards for Professional Learning, especially when the content of the Standards seems to pop up in busy teachers’ energized descriptions of what they are looking forward to learning next year. (For more to think about see https://learningforward.org/who-we-are/announcements/press-releases/2015/08/04/from-mirage-to-reality-redesign-professional-learning-to-improve-classroom-teaching#.VyTJrDArLNM)

“So, I have been focused on the way I use questioning in my classroom—and how to shape the kinds of questions students ask one another. Last week, we were in a teacher lab with my department where we read about a typology of questions (Cultures
of
Thinking
Project, Ritchhart, 2009), I realized how many procedural questions I ask—and that they have no impact!” This high school teacher is seated in a seminar describing his insights into how intentionally formulated questions can open up the student discourse in his classroom. He is connecting his use of questions to other instructional moves, which will shape students’ use of questions as tools for deeper thinking and learning.     

And the real joy for me, as his teacher for that day, is hearing him articulate what he is learning about his practice and moreover, observing him reference being in a teacher lab with his department colleagues, as if that kind of professional interaction was the typical way all high school teachers engage in improving their practices. My own journey with “teacher lab” learning has been a long one: from a university research study group, to a small emergent project in one school, to hosting a network of teacher leaders who design, facilitate, and advocate for this specific format for teacher learning. It is a mile marker for all of us when a teacher speaks of lab learning as context, not innovation, in order to illuminate his own growth as a practitioner. (For more information on lab learning, explore: https://issuu.com/communicationsos/docs/jobembeddedproflearning_2_14_14_e2bd61c28fed17)

“You know, your story about giving feedback during a lesson reminds me of last week when I asked my team-mate to come in and watch my lesson to help me think about my own feedback moves, and he noticed….”  This teacher, participating in a formative assessment workshop series, is focused on articulating a connection she is making between another teacher’s description of providing effective feedback and her own practices. She is focused on linking her understanding of specific information about her own instruction, provided by a grade-level colleague last week, to information a workshop participant is now sharing about the supportive moves a teacher can make inside of a lesson to give students effective  feedback on their thinking. She makes visible, in this moment, both her grappling and her excitement for bringing these insights together and exploring her own deeper understanding of feedback in instruction.

And, the real joy for me, as mentor to the group, is bearing witness to the culture of privacy slowly melting away. This teacher’s description of seeking collegial feedback on her instructional feedback with students is thickly layered and laden with education-ese for observation, data, and new findings. Yet, her language suggests  markings of powerful cultural transformation. I have long kept in clear focus Judith Warren Little’s argument that teaching’s culture of privacy and isolation is the greatest barrier to school improvement. (See for example, The Persistence of Privacy: Autonomy and Initiative in Teachers’ Professional Relations. Little, Judith Warren  Teachers College Record, v91 n4 p509-36 Sum 1990) Indeed, my own professional engagement the past twenty years has centered on helping teachers’ make our practices public to one another for the expressed purpose of improving those practices collectively. When I hear a teacher casually refer to inviting a colleague in for observation and dialogue as a resource for her own learning—well, my heart sings that there is a crack in the persistence researchers have lamented for too long. Then, I listen further to what the teacher is learning because of it—and my mind soars with all we need to do to create this culture of collaborative learning for all teachers.

The challenge we have—the challenge of Education-ese—is that we must always check for shared meaning and shared understanding. What does professional learning mean to you? How is this standard being interpreted? What are the structures and norms for what you describe as lab learning? How do you engage in collaborative dialogue about observed instruction? Language matters and pursuing it is worth it. It spurs me on to hear educators’ use of labels, phrases, descriptors of practice in ways that reflect growth in our learning to learn for other learners.

By Amy Colton and Georgea Langer (a Corwin Press blog)

In our book The Collaborative Analysis of Student Learning, my co-author and I explore many powerful protocols for analyzing student assessments. One of those is the Student Performance Grid, a powerful tool for looking deeply into a class set of assessments. The grid requires a detailed description of each student’s performance and thus presents an accurate picture of what patterns actually exist.

Most teachers score their student’s work and then record the grades. A major pitfall to this “score and grade” approach is the assumption that a single score tells the whole story. But a score of 2 for one student may not mean the same as a 2 for another student. Although some students have the same score, the reasons for those scores are often different. For example, Joe might have a low score because of lack of organization in his writing, whereas Sue earned the same score because of poor mechanics. Such differences often call for different teaching approaches.

The Student Performance Grid protocol (described below) is one of many tools used by teachers to analyze student work while engaged in the Collaborative Analysis of Student Learning (CASL). The Grid provides teachers the opportunity to look beyond the score to find evidence in the work of the student’s specific misconceptions, strengths, and ways of learning. The resulting information is used to establish learning goals for themselves and their students.

Teachers who use the grid experience its power for analyzing each student’s performance in detail and as a result, they often choose to use this method for other important assessments.

The grid is most effective when teachers use an assessment that measures multiple aspects of performance using an “analytic rubric” with more than one category of performance. For example, in writing the rubric might require different scores for the categories of Organization, Voice, Supporting Detail, and Conventions.

Student Performance Grid Protocol

• Sort the class set of student work into the number of scores on the rubric (e.g., three piles for a 2-level rubric). Take notes (to share later) about which parts of the rubric were hard to use or confusing.
• Preparing the Grid.  Take a sheet of paper or start a table on a computer. Draw 4 columns and label them “name”, “score”, “strengths”, and “areas for improvement”.
• Start with the pile with the lowest scores. Enter each student’s name on the left side of the grid, record the score, and then write specific details you see in the paper–both the Strengths and Areas for Improvement: Use more detail than the rubric provides. Sometimes, crucial clues to student learning may appear in the work, but may not appear in the rubric.
• Data: Enter every low-scoring paper onto the grid. Then go on to the next pile (middle scores) and to the same. Continue until all papers are entered, arranged from lowest to highest.
• On the grid’s “areas of improvement” column, color-code common patterns.
• Common Patterns. On the Performance Grid, place a star (*) next to the two or three most common color-coded areas.
• In a group with other teachers, dialogue about the different patterns found in one another’s grids to help decide which patterns might be the most valuable to study, using a question such as, Based on the data, which learning outcomes are most in need of improvement?

Monday, 14 March, 2016, Learning Forward released a national report on Teacher Agency.  You can find the report and other related information on https://learningforward.org/publications/teacher-agency#.VuA-iJMrKqC.

Learning Forward and the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) announced a competition that will invite teachers to submit written proposals for the best use of federal funding for professional learning under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As part of their effort to highlight the critical role of teacher agency in professional learning, Learning Forward and NCTAF will use the competition to amplify and support teachers in understanding the provisions of ESSA aligning the allowable uses of funds under the law with their learning needs.

Through the Agents for Learning competition, teams of educators will be invited to submit written proposals for best uses of Title II and other federal funds under ESSA. The proposals will include:

1. Analysis of teachers’ primary professional learning needs;
2. An educator-informed theory of action around how to leverage professional learning to advance teaching and learning, and
3. Specific recommendations for states, districts, and schools to consider as guides to their Consolidated State Plans and/or state and district Title II plans, a requirement of ESSA, and the design of effective professional learning in their systems.

Teams interested in participating will be invited to a series of webinars helping them to understand the new law, including the rights and responsibilities of states regarding use of federal funds for professional development, as well as how those funds can support a systematic vision for continuous improvement in schools.

Teachers will then submit written plans that will be reviewed by an independent panel.  The finalists will travel to Chicago for two days in July to participate in further training and feedback and then present their proposals to a panel of judges, who will comment on each of the proposals.

All of the proposals will be available online, as will the presentations and feedback and can be used as a planning tool for states, districts, and schools as they work toward ESSA implementation. Supporting partners will disseminate the plans to advocate for effective professional learning with their stakeholders.

Media Contact for Learning Forward:
Tracy Crow, 972-421-0900
tracy.crow@learningforward.org

Media Contact for NCTAF:
Karen Cheeks, 240-233-4110

karen@cheekscommunications.com