Don't let your leadership cause a Head-On collision!

Every September in Sweden, the citizens remember H-Day, probably some more fondly than others.  "Högertrafikomläggningen" ("The right-hand traffic diversion") was the day in 1967 in which Sweden switched from driving on the left-side of the road to the right side. While it may seem a bit comical now, it was serious business at the time, if you stop and reflect on the amount of planning that would go into such a switch, it is easy to question why even bother.  The background of the decision included over 40 years of debate in the country and once the decision was made by the government in 1963, it took four years of planning despite an overwhelming opposition from the public.  In fact, over 80% of the Swedish population opposed the switch but the leaders pressed on. Why? To begin with, most of Europe drove on the right side, including Norway and Finland (Sweden’s immediate neighbors) and more and more vehicles were being made to drive on the right side of the road.  Also, numerous studies had sited safety concerns for left-sided driving.  There were many more head-on collisions in Sweden per capita that other countries. And so the leaders pressed on despite opposition they believed they were making a change that would ultimately be good for the country. 

How does this compare to our leadership in education?  What sacred cows do we hold on to because it is the way we have always done it? Do we resist change because it might be an inconvenience and does not seem worth the effort?   In Sweden, they basically shut down the roads for a day, had lights, traffic signs and paint ready to go for an immediate switch.  They even bought over 8,000 buses with doors on the correct side nationwide to accommodate the change. They spent several years training drivers and preparing them for the change so that when it happened, it was actually one of the safest Mondays on record in terms of accidents. People were focused on their driving, had been prepared, and implemented the plan almost flawlessly. 

What if Sweden had never had an “H-Day”?  Maybe nothing.  Maybe everything would have gone on just as it was and people would have been content. However, maybe things are safer now….maybe driving between countries is easier and more likely.  My point in telling the story is not about the driving.  It is more about the vision, the planning, and the courage it took to make such a switch.  One that literally effected everyone in the country.  It took communication, courage, money, and time.  A lesson we would all be well served to remember when we are leading/seeking change in our schools and our system.  Not everyone is going to like it, but if we have a good reason, stick to the plan, and communicate/prepare everyone well, the change is much more likely to be successful and not a head-on collision.

Make 2016 About "Goal Accomplishment"

The turning of the calendar to a new year always brings a renewed interest in self-improvement.  It may be to eat healthy, exercise, learn something new, be a better person, or just finish a book, but many people set goals and/or resolutions every January.  The vast majority of them will never keep them.  It happens every year. 

If you are reading this, more than likely you work in education and January is the perfect time for goal setting and mid-year adjustments.  I thought I had a unique idea about some ways to start the new year, but it turns out my Twitter and Facebook feeds are both full of people sharing ideas about education resolutions…most far better than mine, but I decided to press on nonetheless.

Just like the age-old exercise resolutions, well intended aspirations often don’t last long. Here are three activities that have I have found greatly increase the likelihood of “goal accomplishment”:

1.        Write them down:  Sounds simple enough, but many people will tell you the exercise of writing down a stated goal leads to the likelihood it will be accomplished.  Why?  Who knows? My guess is that the very elementary task of taking the time to put enough thought into it to put them in writing give you that extra little bit of commitment.  It is sort of like a “To-Do” list, but if you subscribe to a growth mindset, it is more than a compliance to-do list, it becomes something to strive for that makes you and your students better.

2.       Celebrate Small Wins: As the old saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.  Long term goals are great (and necessary to accomplish a vision), but small wins can serve as both a formative check point and as positive motivation. By the end of the month, you should know if you are making progress towards your goal. If your goal is to lose 10 lbs. it is easy to jump on a scale and determine if you have accomplished your goal or how much you still have to go, but if you are working on a specific skill or teaching strategy it may be more difficult to assess how you are doing.  Take time to know if you are improving….either with student results or your own practices. 

3.       Have a clear success criteria:  One of the biggest reasons goals are not accomplished it because we fail to articulate clearly what we are trying to accomplish, how we are going to do it, and how we will know we have accomplished it. Often we have goals like “I’m going to get better at giving feedback.”  What does that even mean? The frequency? The quality? And isn’t the purpose of giving feedback so that students will improve?  If so, might that truly be the success criteria for effective feedback.  There are countless other examples of broadly based, well-intended goals without a clear cycle of assessing for success.

One of my favorite TED talks of all time is a simple, lighthearted look at 30-Day Challenges by Matt Cutts.  He touches on many of the principles above, but does so with a common sense approach to goal accomplishment. Here is the link:

Try Something New for 30 Days

Whatever you are trying to improve in 2016, I wish you the best of luck….I hope you know by the end of January if you are making progress.

How do you bake a cake?

Recently, I was chatting with someone I consider a true expert in our field.  We were talking about what seems to be missing in today’s classrooms.  Don’t get me wrong, it was not a cri

tical conversation about today’s classrooms.  In fact, it was an acknowledgement that teaching today is harder than it has ever been….students are more diverse, parents more difficult, the content has increased as have the expectations.  Another variable that has greatly increased for teacher is the access and availability of resources. There are so many “researched based” ideas out there that a quick search of the internet or even the classroom bookshelf gives a teacher an abundance of great lesson ideas or quick fix strategies.  Here is where my wise friend struck me with an interesting observation.  She asked how many teachers know how to cook from scratch? And how many bake cakes from a box?

The premise was simple.  I have had some excellent cakes made from a box (even made a few myself).  I dump the contents in, add an egg or two, a little milk and PRESTO!  I have a cake….actually, I have a pretty good cake.  One that I would even serve guests and be proud.  The problem is, I have no idea how to bake nor the first thing about what goes into making a homemade cake.  There is also no way I could teach someone else how to bake because I don’t understand the process, I just follow the recipe.  When an expert baker begins a cake, they know what ingredients to add, they put a little extra here and a little less there based on personal taste.  Because of their experience and their knowledge, they know how to make the cake a little lighter or sweeter or whatever they want.  They are designing it as they go and if you stopped them to ask, they could explain the why behind each ingredient and the order in which they should be added. 

Teaching is no difference.  The true experts (the bakers) can design a perfect lesson because they understand the content and their students (what flavors do they like?).  They know what order to present the information. They know when to add something extra and when to leave out something out that is not needed.  They know what is important.  

Box cakes lessons and resources are very necessary and can be very good.  They help us be more efficient and feed our students.  In a day and age when everything is so busy, it is important to have tools that save us time and energy.  It is equally important to have someone that knows the ingredients (the process) and can make adjustments as needed. We need teachers that are bakers!!!

Do you have any Sleepers in your classroom?

"To raise achievement, schools may need to work as hard on the social-emotional aspect of learning as they do on the academic aspect." -Deborah D. Brennan

After only the first week of school, chances are most teachers are already getting a feel for their students.  In any given class, there are teacher pleasers, those that test our patience, probably some students that know the material you are presenting already, and some that may never truly understand it.  The challenge of teaching a room full of students with different interests, backgrounds, and motivations is part of what make teaching one of the most difficult professions in the world.

The start of the school year is also when educators everywhere annually proclaim their job is about “building relationships”.  It is true!  A teacher that doesn’t love students and do what they can to get to know them is in the business for the wrong reasons.  However, getting to know them isn’t enough.  From a teaching standpoint, the whole purpose of building relationships is so that we can figure out what makes a kid “tick”.  How can we teach them better?  How might we design our classrooms and our lessons to make them more engaging and fulfilling for our students?  Building a relationship with a student should be the very first formative assessment of the year.  The question remains, just like with any other formative assessment, what will you do with the information about the student once you have it?  With so many kids and so many styles, it is difficult to know them all.  It takes time, experience, and expertise.  It also takes a teacher that is willing to change the way they do things when needed. 

Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, created a great video about a student he referred to as “The Sleeper”.  This student made him question the way he taught his class, and it also taught him a lesson in building relationships with student. 

Watch and see….the student didn’t change until the teacher’s classroom changed! Nobody said teaching would be easy….but it is worth it!  Get to know your kids and then use it to make their learning experience dynamic!!

Chapter 6- Coach’s Guide to Facilitation Protocols and Activities

As we near the end of the book (and unfortunately summer), we come to an often overlooked or at least underestimated part of the PLC process….training and supporting the leader of the team.  Most PLCs are led by a grade level chairperson or a content department chair.  Generally these people have earned such a title because they are great teachers and probably have also shown the ability to lead around the campus.  However, leading a PLC can be a challenging process for anyone and some of the protocols and activities outlined in Chapter 6 can go a long way in helping a PLC leader prepare. 

While I will not go through the specific activities outlined in this chapter (you can read them yourself), I can’t emphasis enough how important it is for the leaders of the building to set the tone for professional learning on the campus.  The question Venables’ poses on pg. 111 is highly valuable and should be asked over and over again:  Why does this activity have to do with being part of an authentic PLC? While this question is used as part of the Traffic Jam protocol, it should be used as the basis for any agenda for a PLC.

Another important component in successful PLC’s is setting up the expectations.  In Chapter 2 we discussed norms and the need to take the time to discuss and create them as a team. In our own curriculum with students, it has become common place to take time within the “First 30 Days” to set up rituals and routines in the classroom with our students.  We emphasize building relationships between students and teachers and we should do the same with our PLCs.  The first few weeks can and be used to understand the purpose of the meetings, agree upon agendas, expectations, and even practice some of the proposed protocols or activities.  While we may think we don’t have time to “set up” our PLCs, I would argue that we don’t have time not to. 

Although the entire PLC is responsible for student learning and the overall culture of the PLC, everyone will look to the leader to set the tone. When PLC leaders ask difficult questions that challenge the status quo, they are pushing the entire team to get better.  By using protocols, it can help everyone involved, especially the leader, to become more comfortable challenging each other and improving over time.  Richard Elmore, co-author of Instructional Rounds, shared that “Schools that show the greatest improvement, generally do so under their own devices”.  This takes leadership from teachers, innovation, and a willingness to challenge each other.  When your PLC has acquired these characteristics on a consistent basis, you will have arrived as an “Authentic PLC”.

Reflective Questions:

·       What has our campus done for PLC leaders to prepare them to move their team’s work forward?

·       What protocol in the chapter, or elsewhere, are you looking forward to using in your PLC this year?

Chapter 5: Reviewing and Responding to Data

 “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data”

Throughout the summer, as we have read Venables’s book, The Practice of Authentic PLC’s, a constant has been the reminder of the three purposes of a Professional Learning Community. Very simply, PLCs should do the following:  Look at student and teacher work; design quality common formative assessments, and review/respond to data.  This week’s chapter discusses the last of the three and perhaps the one that is the most misused.  

There are so many versions, variables and ways of looking at data, that one of the biggest challenges individual educators, much less PLC’s, have is to determine what data to use and how to use it.  On page 92, Venables uses a quote from James Popham’s book, Transformative Assessment to sum up the use of data about as well as it can be.  “Formative assessment is a planned process in which teachers or students use assessment-based evidence to adjust what they’re currently doing.”  Looking at data in a PLC must be a planned process (intentional).  What common assignment are we going to look at? Why did we pick this particular assignment (high leverage? Readiness standard?) And what is the learning criteria/standard we expect of the students?  If the PLC answers these types of questions in their PLC (see chapter 4), the type of data they collect will be much more valuable and therefore can be used to guide learning in the immediate future.  If, on the other hand, they bring in random pieces of student work that are not designed around the most important learning standards, is the data (or time used doing it) worth using to assess how a group of students are progressing?   Part of this process may be the need within our PLC to develop common “Assessment Literacy”.  Does everyone in the group know the purpose of the assessment, what they are looking for, and how it is aligned to larger learning standards? If they do not, it can cause misalignment, inaccurate data, or both.

Besides the planning process of looking at data, the value in collecting data only comes from using it correctly. In NISD, our grading policy categorizes assignments/assessments into two categories:  Formative and Summative.  The concept seems sound, formative grades are used to help monitor and prepare students for the larger summative assessments that culminate a unit of study.  However, the reality is that the differentiation between formative and summative has more to do with how the student and teacher use the information than what goes in the gradebook.  

When your PLC looks at data, they should be very intentional about what data they want to look at to assess their own progress as well as individual students.  You should also confront the brutal facts about what pieces of data truly effect your teaching and learning.  The chart below has been modified from the one on pg. 95 to fit the NISD terms for assessments.  It is an excellent visual to show the types of assessments that can, and should be, the most impactful on instruction.  

It is my hope that our PLCs during this coming school year can be curious learners when it comes to looking at student data. No matter if the initial results are good or bad, if we take an “inquiry” approach to looking at data and take out the personal side of it, we are better able to find the trends and answers we are seeking.  And, if we can connect all three “purposes” of a PLC together we can do the following outlined on page 103:

Connecting Learning Gaps to Instructional Gaps

“All too often, teachers use data to discover where their students are weak or to indentify skills and concepts their students have not mastered, and then they stop there. In these instances, teachers are seeing only half of the issue. Unless and until teachers link these student weaknesses to teacher practice, that is, to instructional weaknesses, they cannot move forward in fixing the problem.”

This short video from the Data Wise project at Harvard University does a great job of outlining the purpose of data to instruction and the effect of  intentionally collaborating on data in a PLC.

Harvard University: ACE Habits of Mind (Action, Collaboration, Evidence)

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=datawise&pageid=icb.page582597

Reflective Questions:

• What evidence do you collect (more data) that shows a response to data improves student achievement? How do you know?
• What is the hardest part of looking at data with a PLC?

Chapter 4- Designing Quality Common Formative Assessments"

"Great team members hold each other accountable to the high standards and excellence their culture expects and demands." 

-Jon Gordon

Of all the things that make teaching both challenging and worthwhile, assessing students learning may be the most difficult.  The responsibility of monitoring student progress is far from an exact science, but it can be made easier through collaboration and calibration with other educators.  One of the main areas of focus for our PLCs should be designing quality common formative assessments.  It sounds simple enough, but as Venables points out, creating quality formative assessments are not easy.  This is why is it so important that teachers work together to determine what they want students to know and how they will assess if they do.

First, we must remember be clear about the difference between formative and summative assessment. In NISD, we have a collection of Curriculum Based Assessments (CBAs) that are summative in nature. They are given after a unit of learning and generally speaking should give us information about which students did or did not learn the key points within the curriculum.  STAAR tests, EOCs, AP exams, should all be considered forms of summative assessment as well.  They come near the end of the year and are “suppose” to inform us about what students have learned, but they do very little to guide instruction or help students improve.  To truly know how students are progressing, teachers must use various forms of formative assessment (daily, weekly, etc.) to frequently monitor how and what students are learning so they can tailor their instruction to meet both class and individual needs.  Great teachers do this either through experience or second nature, but the power of sharing connected knowledge is developing these types of assessments through collaboration in PLCs. 

In Chapter 4, Venables spends a lot of time addressing the sometimes negative perception of “teaching to the test”.  As he mentions, and I agree, if it is a well-constructed assessment, there should be no problem with teachers instructing to the level of the test.  However, if the assessment or task a student is to be given is at a low-level, it is likely the instruction will match that as well.  This is why it is essential that teachers work together to create the best formative assessments possible which also allows for consistency and calibration within the school.  The word “common” should not be underestimated. Several campuses use protocols or systems such as "State of the Class" each week that is based on a common assignment. Activities such as this allow for identification of needs, both for the whole class and individuals. If  teachers work together to determine the learning target for the lesson and unpack the standard to decide the level of rigor in which that standard will be assessed then the instruction is much more likely to be on point.  It also gives valuable information when using the protocols to assess student work (chapter 3) and student/class data (chapter 5).  Pages 64-66 in the book do a great job of explaining some ways in which PLCs can begin to identify standards to assess.  Another excellent resource for this work is Learning Targets, because it forces teachers to determine what and how a student will meet the learning criteria.  There are numerous protocols and ways to break down standards, the key is to use the PLC to work together so that all members have the same understanding before beginning instruction.

If you are looking for some great PLC resources, I suggest these books.  All have protocols and ideas to help jumpstart even the most experiences of PLC groups!!

Have your students ever done really well on all the formatives leading up to a summative and then “bombed” the test?  The most common reason for that is misalignment between the two.  In an era in which we are trying desperately to have kids “think” and the assessments to be more “authentic” it is imperative that what they experience daily is rigorous and standards-based.  Pages 67-71 do an excellent job of explaining the rationale for standards-based formative assessment, including a chart on page 71 highlighting some of the differences.  However,  to produce the most authentic forms of assessment (and also the most time consuming), Venables offers a section of “Alternative forms of Common Assessment” starting on page 72 that should prove both challenging and essential in an NISD classroom.  PLCs should be discussing ways students show their learning beyond multiple choice tests, but in doing so, they must keep several key components in mind:

·       Alternative forms of assessment should be rigorous and content-rich

·       Alternative forms of assessment should align to the ELO’s (not merely assess other related skills and concepts).

·       Alternative forms of assessments should be evaluated with a standards-based rubric.  Pg. 72

For the purposes of this blog and space, there are too many implications to the statements above, but I hope that all the readers will take time to reflect on the types of projects and rubrics in use by their PLCs or in their own classrooms.  The author points out several common misconceptions in their design that often lead to misalignment or improper assessment of learning (read: the project becomes a waste of time).    The essential question to keep in mind:  Where in what the student did is there evidence of learning?

Finally, there are two other areas addressed by Venables in Chapter 4.  Grading and Intervention.  While grading is a necessary component to our daily jobs, they key takeaway for me is the need for calibration among the PLC members.  We must design quality formatives and then we must grade them consistently in order to make the valid and informative.  The intervention component of common formative assessments is the lifeblood of why we would do formatives at all. If we do not do anything to inform our instruction or assist students in need, the purpose of the formative is lost.  We will explore this subject in greater detail next week as we look at how data can be used in a PLC.

Reflective questions:

- How does your PLC respond to "teaching to the test" comments?

-How often do my students experience a common formative assessment created by my PLC? And what do we do to ensure it is a high-quality assessment?

- What are the pros and cons of using alternative formative assessments on a regular basis?