Sharing with Department Heads (continued from December)

Lisa Weiss contributed today's post. For more information, read Lisa's other posts about her district's "laser-like focus on the intentional use of literacy in the service of our contents." This post is a continuation of "Sharing with Department Heads."

The discussion of the bulleted items from November, with the department heads was fascinating, and after we defined what we meant by disciplinary literacy, I transitioned into the why behind the focus of writing as a 6-12 school improvement goal, and what it meant for all departments/teachers as we considered writing SLO’s.

I “sold” this 15 minute time to the department heads as a mini-keynote. I talked through how, by focusing on writing, and specifically writing standard 9, we are all pulling in the same direction. I suggested that they consider using writing as an SLO for two reasons: we have data from social studies and English as established data points, and all the 6-12 professional development this year is focused on writing. An SLO, quite naturally, is determined by a teacher, and while we want them to write an SLO that makes sense to them, we wanted to encourage them to write one based on the professional learning that was to take place.

After sharing this information, I had the department heads talk to a partner, reconstructing my messages about why we were moving to a writing goal, how W9 was chosen, how W9 still relates to our reading goals from last year, how the professional development calendar focuses on writing, and how all of this ties to SLO’s. As pairs of department heads verbally processed the information, I walked around, clarifying questions. I did this for two reasons. I needed them to understand all of this information so they could articulate it to their colleagues in their departments, and I needed the opportunity to address any misunderstandings.

Although people were kind, I knew this was unexpected information, and it was clear that  they were considering the ideas, as well as anticipating the outcomes. I wanted to share some examples of high schools where teachers pulled in the same direction and saw astonishing results. I went to an old favorite, Mike Schmoker. In Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, Schmoker gives examples of high schools where teachers systematically and consistently engaged kids in close reading, and/or monthly formal writing assignments, and/or Socratic discussions, for example, and then reported what that did for student learning--at Tempe Preparatory Academy, 100% of students passed their state examinations in reading, writing, and math! I wanted to show the department heads the results of all of us speaking the same language, and pulling in the same direction!

I pulled an excerpt from the text, “Simple, Redundant Literacy,” for the group to read and discuss, and I ended by sharing my simple, redundant literacy professional development plan for the district. Here’s the gist of what I shared:

• I promise to keep it simple!
• I promise to share one, maybe two reading strategies.
• I promise to model how to model the writing you require of your students.
• I promise to teach you how to assess the writing as a content teacher. I promise to keep it simple!
• I promise that we will follow a learning progression like this: learn a new strategy, then have time to plan for the use of it, implement it, and then return to the student work to analyze. Whenever we learn something new, we are going to take the time each week at collaboration to think more and plan for the intentional use of it!
• I promise to slow down if you’re not ready to move on, and I promise to differentiate for those buildings that need something different.

It was a great day, and I think the words of one teacher sums up how the day went for most of the department heads. Afterward, a teacher I met for the first time that day, one who taught a content where the idea of writing could be tricky, approached me to say: Nobody, absolutely nobody, was excited about coming here today to hear about literacy, but you made it okay, and I think I can do this because I think your plan is simple, makes sense, and I feel like you are going to support us.

Not a bad first impression!