Productive Partnerships: New Professional Learning

Barb Novak contributed today's post. Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recognizes that improving literacy outcomes for all students depends upon collaboration between adults, who often bring different areas of expertise and varied beliefs about reading. While this could ensure that the team is able to select or design an intervention that matches a student’s exact needs, this variety in knowledge and understanding can also pose interpersonal challenges that impact the team’s ability to serve students.

Productive Partnerships Learning Module

Productive Partnerships: Collaboration Strategies to Improve Outcomes is a collection of online resources to build and maintain a healthy team focusing on improving literacy outcomes for all students. The materials include preventative and maintenance tools about trust, individual strengths in collaboration, and norms; an overview of a variety of theories about literacy; and a process a team can use for writing beliefs about literacy.

The materials also include strategies to apply when team members are experiencing interpersonal conflict. Individuals can apply these strategies to examine and change their behavior or to prepare for talking with a colleague about a difficult topic. Strategies include assuming positive intent, listening, diagramming interpersonal conflict, and scripting hard conversations.

The resources include a ready-to-use slide deck with speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, handouts, and video explanations. Users are encouraged to modify the materials to best meet the needs of the team(s) they serve.

The materials - developed by experts representing literacy, Title I, and special education - can be accessed at http://dpi.wi.gov/reading/professional-learning/productive-partnerships.

Walking Meetings: Advantages of Taking that Meeting Outside for a Walk

Diane Jenquin contributed this post. Click here for more of Diane's thinking.

In this busy, hectic world we live in it is hard to fit in another meeting, let alone taking time to get that much needed brain break in. In the school district I am in right now we have turned to implementing walking meetings on our WOW days (Work-Out Wednesday) It is amazing how we not only get the exercise but mix a little socialization and brainstorming into the equation.  When the walk is done, so is our meeting.  It helps us stay on track and straight to the point of the meeting.

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerman, Ariannah Huffington,and President Barack Obama are known for holding walking meetings.  Why you might ask? Research coming out of Stanford found that walking boosts creative inspiration (Wong, 2014). Other companies have reported that meetings with movement create a better working atmosphere along with getting away from the office.  

Some of the things to consider when holding a walking meeting are limiting the size of the group because your team might have trouble hearing others, having a basic route planned out, and limiting the use of smart phones. This allows you to keep focused, be efficient, and clear your head.

Carrying this over into my life outside of school has become a routine where instead of talking on the phone with some of my professional networks, we call and say, "Let’s go for a walk." This has pushed us to get out there and together solved all the problems of the world.

Here are some resources if you would like more information.

• "Got a Meeting? Take a Walk" (a TED talk from Nilofer Merchant)
• "Why Walking Meetings can be Better than Sitting Meetings" (an article from HuffPost Business)
• "Guide to Walking Meetings" (from Feet First)
• "Why Everyone from Beethoven, Goethe, Dickens, Darwin to Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too" (from Andrew Tate)

Time in the Classroom: Multiple Benefits

Heather Zimmerman contributed this post. Click here for more of Heather's thinking.

I am sure we all know the overwhelming feeling of trying to balance the many directions we are pulled in as reading specialists.  Last year was the first year I was teaching reading intervention courses and also coaching.  That dreaded feeling of not doing either role justice was common for me last year.  This year though I decided to tackle that feeling with a coaching game plan.

Last school year my district implemented the Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Writing into middle school classrooms.  The summer before the roll-out, I worked with a small group of 8th grade teachers on various assigned tasks to prepare for the roll-out.  This helped me get a better idea of the Calkins’ curriculum, but throughout the year I started to feel as if my depth of knowledge was lacking.  This was the first curriculum roll-out I was not a part of as a teacher.  Therefore, I did not feel like I knew the Calkins’ curriculum as well as I knew the rest of our curriculum

I made a decision that this year I was going to focus on the Units of Study with the teachers. Due to schedule conflicts, my focus this year is 7th and 8th grade, and next year I will focus on 6th grade.  I felt this made sense for a few reasons, but one primary reason was that the 6th grade teachers have three literacy teachers at their level.  Therefore, they  have a built-in team of support.  The 7th and 8th grade teachers on their own islands in my school. My plan for supporting teachers with the Calkins’ curriculum was to be in their classrooms as they were teaching the units.  I planned as best as I could to go into hours where I had intervention students, so I could also support them too.  I told the teachers I wanted to learn more about the Calkins’ units, so I could better support them too.  I let them know I would be game to co-teach or work with small groups of students.  This experience has helped me as an interventionist and as a coach.  

As an interventionist, I have been better able to help my students when they have questions on assignments even when they are not in their literacy classroom.  There has been times when I have taken 5-10 minutes to talk students through a lesson from Calkins’ or helped the student through a conference during intervention.  I also have been able to support them inside the literacy classroom.

The other benefit, which is the original benefit I was expecting, I was knowing the curriculum better so I could better help support my literacy teachers.  I feel our collaboration time is much better used when I am not paging through the curriculum book or having them give me information on what the unit is about.  We have been able to talk through questions together and brainstorm ideas.

I am so happy I was able to connect with my teachers during this first unit of Calkins.  The time commitment was so well worth it. I look forward to working with them using the same plan for unit two.  

Aligning Our Goals

Andrea Reichenberger contributed today's thinking. Click here for more of Andrea's posts.

One of the things I love most about my new school district is the work that I do with my new colleagues.  Discussions are a lot easier when we are all on the same page, have a similar mindset, and are working toward the same goal.  We are also comfortable enough to challenge each other’s thinking in a professional manner that won’t impede our work. As is the goal of any district, ours is to improve our overall instructional practices. My two closest partners in crime are the Director of Curriculum and Instruction and the District Technology Coordinator.  

District Technology Coordinator? Why would I work so closely with the technology department? If departments such as ours don’t work toward the same goals, our work and initiatives become a barrier to improving instruction. It is imperative that technology coaches and coordinators work closely with our instructional coaches and continue an open dialogue about best practices. We are always talking about grade level standards, literacy, math, assessment and unit design. One of our technology integration coaches has been working to model lesson design with the ELA standards in mind and then incorporating technology to promote authentic assessment and reflection through an online portfolio!

We all need to understand sound instructional practices, so we can use technology to support learning and instruction. Technology isn’t meant as a substitute or a replacement for teaching and learning. The ISTE professional standards for teachers related to integrating technology into the curriculum remind us that it should facilitate and inspire student learning, allow us to design and develop digital-age learning experiments and assessments, promote digital citizenship and responsibility and allow us to engage in professional growth and leadership. Recently, our technology department released a district online newsletter/magazine and it contains questions that challenge teachers to think about why they are using technology. One of my favorites is:

If your students can accomplish mastery of the content using the 4 C’s (Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity) without  technology, then why are we using technology?

This is an important question to reflect on as we continue to encourage incorporating technology to create rich, collaborative learning environments that foster group inquiry, research investigations, critical thinking and problem solving. This is what we try to accomplish and encourage with our instruction in all areas--especially literacy.

Collaborating with Special Education Teachers: Using Goals to Grow Our Readers

Heather Zimmerman contributed today's thinking.

This year my school district is having 6-12 special education teachers use the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment kit to determine reading levels and to use Fountas and Pinnell’s The Continuum of Learning to guide reading goals for IEPs.  

As the literacy coach I worked with the teachers in my building last year to make sure they knew how to use the assessment kit.  This year we started to test in fall.  I am so excited we are collaborating and focusing on literacy together.  I really want to make sure that my teachers get the most out of the data as possible to find it useful.  

After teachers tested and wrote goals, my principal and I met with the special education teachers and our PST (program support teacher) to discuss the goals.  I led a discussion focusing on what the assessment can tells us, reflecting on the goals picked from The Continuum of Learning, and tools to use while conferring with readers.  I told my special education teachers that they are the experts in writing goals, and I am just here with my reading lens to help them if needed.    

The Continuum of Learning was a new book for my teachers, so I wanted to make sure they felt comfortable with their goals.  As we reflected, we talked about the goals meeting the following guidelines:

• A goal other teachers will understand. (The goal does not need to be copied word for word from the book.)
• A goal that can be measured.
• A goal that is generalizable.  (That way the goal can be applied to all classes.)

From there we reflected on the goals using the above guidelines.  This chart I created helped guide our thinking:

After we reflected on the goals, I shared some conferring questions and tools to track conferring both for special education teachers and regular education teachers.  I appreciated our time together and the new learning I experienced as I found out more about the IEP process and goal requirements.  I look forward to learning and growing together this year as we continue on this journey.

Team Personalities

Sharon Seely contributed today's thinking.

Image Source.

Last week, waiting at the copy machine, talking about upcoming meetings with another teacher, I said that at an earlier time in my life, I had chosen to be very quiet and to not contribute to conversations at meetings. The teacher looked at me and said…that’s hard to believe, I can’t see you just sitting there and not saying anything.

I thought, "Wow! I have changed." Years ago, I didn’t contribute because I both feared there would be rebuttal from someone saying I was way off base or didn’t know my material and I questioned my own experience/knowledge.

This prompted me to think about teachers meeting and their sharing with their teams (grade-level, building-level), how are they feeling about sharing?  In the Leadership and Coaching training, I learned about team design. This began with understanding how we all contribute and communicate within a team.

One method is called the True Colors Personality Test.  The True Colors Personality Test is an inventory to help understand your own personality style/type and the personality style/type of your teammates.  This method promotes an appreciation of individual differences and the unique blend of the four styles.  There is no good or bad color and a wide individual variation does exist within each color. At a glance personalities are grouped into four colors:

• Gold – “Be prepared and organized!”
• Green – “What’s the Big Picture?
• Orange – “Just do it!”
• Blue – “How does that make you feel?”

What can we learn about ourselves and others from this personality test?

• How we direct our energy
• How we make a cohesive, effective team
• How we solve problems
• How we deal with conflict
• How we build on strengths
• How we coach and lead

When we did this at the training, the colleagues I attended with and I were three very different colors/color combinations; blue, gold/green and orange and we continue to function well as a team.

What color are you?  What colors are your teammates?

My PLC: What and How

I am fortunate enough to be part of several different collegial groups - professional learning communities or PLCs - that help me learn and grow. 

Today, I want to tell you about one of those PLCs that is particularly close to my heart. We meet monthly over lunch. Our meetings are scheduled about 12 months in advance. We've structured our time in a variety of ways. Right now, someone selects a peer-reviewed and published article (mostly research) about literacy for each meeting. We read it prior to the meeting and discuss it. We keep notes from the discussion, so we are each able to quickly access information when it is relevant to our job.

Here are some lessons I've learned about PLCs from this PLC:

• Our group formed for an authentic purpose. To do our jobs well, we each need to understand reading and literacy from a variety of perspectives.
• We operate from established norms (which we revisit often). We established norms for our PLC and wrote them down. We refer to these norms during our conversations and email exchanges, but we also revisit these norms in a very formal way when our group is struggling.
• We meet regularly. Right now, that's about monthly while eating lunch.
• We communicate. Meetings are scheduled in advance and on everyone's calendar. We use email to confirm attendance or let others know of conflicts.
• We all have ownership. Right now, we meet monthly. Each month we discuss a different research study (peer-reviewed and published) selected by a member. We all read the selected study and come to the meeting prepared.
• We have varied backgrounds and areas of interest/expertise. We each bring a unique lens to our discussions and truly learn and grow from our conversations.
• We do hard work. The pieces we read and discuss are, generally, difficult to understand. Talking about them keeps us accountable and helps us understand.

Nature, Nurture, and Collaboration

The next few posts are "Coach's Choice." Each coach selected what she wanted to write about.

Today's post is brought to you by Barb.

In preparing for a meeting that had the potential to be, um, very challenging, a most-favorite (and very wise) colleague reminded me that collaboration is a learned behavior. She was suggesting - in a soft and helpful way that she is a master at - that the meeting might be more productive if the group learned how to collaborate.

This quick conversation has spiraled me into thinking a whole lot about exactly how people learn to collaborate. 

For a chosen few, it does seems natural; collaboration can be a function of nature. We all have those people in our personal and professional lives who just know how to function on a collaborative team. Maybe it's a function of being a middle child. Maybe it has something to do with their zodiac sign. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it's the result of many years of therapy. I'm not sure. I am sure, though, that I appreciate having the "natural" collaborators as part of my team.

It seems, though, that for many people - me included! - effective collaboration is more a function of nurture than nature. Collaboration is something we learn to do. How, though, do we learn?

We can learn to collaborate by observing those around us. We watch others for cues about expected and accepted behavior and language, and we mimic their behavior. It's a way to be part of the group, and a way to help the group continue moving forward. 

What happens, though, if what we observe and mimic is not productive? Worse yet, what happens if it's toxic? 

I would argue that learning to collaborate needs to happen through explicit teaching and learning.

I have been part of more meetings than I can count that were dedicated to learning to collaborate. Primarily, these meetings were about establishing norms. I'm part of one group that even prints the norms on the back of each team member's nameplate, so the norms stare at the person through each and every meeting. The sad truth, though, is that the team with the nameplate norms rarely follows those norms!!

How, then, do we explicitly learn to collaborate successfully? I recommend a professional learning module - Facilitating Learning Teams - from Learning Forward. I used the module with a struggling learning team with great success. The team established norms, discussed potential challenges to those norms, and were explicit about communication expectations. 

The team also devised a meeting schedule that included specific times for checking-in on application of its norms and procedures. (That's right - there are regularly scheduled meetings about how the meetings run.) Those meetings - which include equal amounts of celebration and honest feedback -  keep the team honest and committed to its norms and procedures.

Explicit teaching and learning about collaboration helped that team be more productive and healthy (nurture over nature).