Coincidence? I Think Not!
A phrase adored by conspiracy theorists across the world. Folks who look behind every door, under every rug and every rock to unearth some of the governments most deeply held secrets. Now I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I thought I could make this saying stretch to meet my needs. A few days ago I found myself reflecting on the current state of curriculum development in our school/district. More specifically, I was thinking about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in relation to our implementation and ways to best support the significant changes required under the new standards. I thought about an earlier blog post on the importance of taking a long term view of CCSS implementation and how best to share resources with teachers, provide teachers with professional development, monitor our student growth against the CCSS and intervene with those students not achieving at proficient levels. Coincidentally, I am currently reading Leaders of Learning by Richard Dufour and Robert Marzano. Coincidentally, the authors discuss the importance of Professional Learning Communities (PLC's) in designing a guaranteed viable curriculum for all students that helps "students acquire the same essential knowledge and skills regardless of the teacher to who they are assigned" (p.90). Coincidentally, both PLC and CCSS have the letter C in them. Coincidence? I think not!
Common Ground
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| "Working interdependently to achieve a common goal" |
Before we enter too far into this discussion, let's take a second to ensure we are all working from the same baseline. PLC is a term that gets used fairly liberally in education circles, and people have varying levels of understanding on what a PLC is, does and embodies. For the purpose of this discussion, I am going to go to the source. In Leaders of Learning, and other books authored by Dufour, Dufour and Marzano state that the "PLC concept represents an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve" (p.22). Further, let's define the PLC collaborative team. Dufour has repeatedly referred to the collaborative team in a PLC as "a group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal for which members are mutually accountable." The interdependence is what separates a team from a group of people. I learned this lesson at a young age through team sports. No matter how hard I played or how skilled I was on the soccer field, I could not achieve my goal (winning) without the other members of the team. Each member of the team was dependent upon the effort and skills of the other members, as they were on him, and only in working together could we accomplish our goals.
Ripe Ground
Elementary schools provide fertile soil for the growth and development of collaborative teams. Except for in the smallest of schools, elementary schools often have multiple teachers that teach the same content. This provides for the easy formation of meaningful teams that can set common goals both professionally and for student learning. Also, there is a high demand on the elementary school teacher as (s)he is responsible for all academic instruction. When one considers changes to both math and ELA standards, newly implemented evaluations systems, increased demands for student achievement, soon to arrive updated student assessment systems, and soon to be released updated science standards the average elementary school teacher is facing enough cognitive dissonance to paralyze an elephant; and that is all before the first student asks to use the bathroom. Does it make any sense for teachers to face these challenges alone? Should we continue to close our doors, plan in solitary, problem solve alone and forge ahead as individuals who all just so happen to work in the same building?
I submit that to answer yes is analogous to committing career suicide. We should leverage our collective strength for the betterment of ourselves, the educational experiences of our students and our quality of professional life. PLC collaborative teams provide us with the perfect opportunity to face these ever increasing demands together, to lean on the support of the group and to find strength in what "we" provides that "I" can not.
How might this work?
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| Properties of Operations taught early = later success in algebra |
The paragraph above illustrates the mental process a teacher must undertake in preparing a lesson to meet this one standard, all before considering the needs of her students on IEP's and her ELL students, what materials she has available, Sally's diabetic needs, the fact that Johnny's parents are in a nasty custody battle, and managing Sandra's behavior plan. Also, the above paragraph only applies to math, the elementary teacher is also responsible for ELA, social studies, science and a social curriculum. Does it make sense to do this alone? Instead, what would it look like if a collaborative team was to enter into a lesson study? What if the team said something like, "You know, we are all responsible for teaching this standard and assessing student growth towards it, maybe we should plan how to best do this together." Not only would such an approach be in the best interest of the students, but it would be immensely beneficial to each educator. No longer would teachers have to suffer through planning in their individual silence; they would be able to access the collective strength of the team.
Let's continue to look at standard 2.NBT.5 through the eyes of a collaborative team. The crucial first step in all lesson planning is to determine the lesson's learning objective. One might say that this is simple, "teach the standard." However, if you were to sit a team of 5 members down and ask them one by one to write down what they think the standard is calling for, you would likely get 5 different answers. Collaborative teams should work together to dissect the standards they are responsible for (e.g. What are the strategies based on place value? How about properties of operations or the relation between addition/subtraction?) and establish the criteria that will define student mastery (How can students best demonstrate their knowledge of this standard?). Without these discussions, how can we be assured we have the same understanding? Are you looking for a student to show one of each type of strategy? Two of each? Mastery of one? Will they demonstrate it orally? On a test or worksheet? Using manipulatives? Through a drawing? These are important questions that the team should address in order to ensure there is a common expectation for student performance and lesson objectives. This creates a fabulous opportunity for colleagues to learn from each other and expand their thinking; this is job embedded professional development.
Once the team has established a common set of objectives and criteria they are able begin to think about lesson planning. Due to the nature of standard 2.NBT.5, teachers must consider a variety of strategies that students could utilize to answer addition problems of two 2-digit numbers that does not include the standard algorithm. In addition, teachers must consider possible misconceptions students might have with each of the different strategies. This task of anticipating student responses and misconceptions can be done easiest in a team. The team takes 3 minutes and each member silently writes down as many ways (s)he can think of to solve the problem. Then the team combines all the strategies they came up with (eliminating the duplicates) and now they have an excellent resource to inform all their thinking. Next, the team could discuss each strategy and consider misconceptions that may develop with that strategy among their students. Once this work was completed, the allotted collaborative time would likely be close to ending. The team could assign itself homework: Each member is to create one lesson that addresses the objective we created. The lesson will also incorporate at least one Standard for Mathematical Practice. The next time the team meets, the each member shares their lesson with his/her colleagues and answers any questions. Enough copies of the lesson are made for each member of the team. This approach is often referred to as 'Bring 1 get X." You bring one lesson to the group and get a lesson from every other member of the group in return. This substantially reduces the burden of lesson plan writing on the individual teacher. If the team has done an honest and thorough job identifying the learning objectives and criteria, each lesson should be a direct match to the needs of the students and a relevant resource for each member of the team.
Once the lessons are delivered, the team focus shifts to student achievement. Using the team established criteria, the team collectively reviews student achievement data and plans for ways to intervene with students that did not meet the criteria. Again, the strength of the team allows for a greater variety of pedagogical strategies for meeting the needs of all the students. Once a collaborative team has established professional trust, interdependence and collective accountability, they are able to openly discuss their students, reflect on their own practice, offer constructive feedback and seek out help from the group.
One Last Thought From the Source
I thought an appropriate way to end this discussion was with a short video clip of Rick DuFour speaking about the difference between a group and a team. He does a much more eloquent job than I could ever hope to.
