The Tempered Radical

Clear Vision of Intended Learning

So here's an interesting question:  If students cannot self-assess without a clear vision of the intended learning, what is your learning team doing to make sure that students understand the expected outcomes for your lessons?

 

Download Slide_ClearVisionofLearning
 

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work

My first book—co-authored with my friend and colleague Parry Graham and titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Work—has finally hit the shelves!  My copies landed on my doorstep about two weeks ago, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. 

What you’ll see if you decide to pick up a copy is that we’ve started each chapter with the story of Steve—the fictional principal of Central Middle school—and his colleagues who are working to restructure their traditional school as a professional learning community. 

The stories that we include detail common PLC challenges—setting vision, overcoming conflict, wrestling with data—in an approachable narrative that will resonate with readers simply because they are drawn from real experiences that Parry and I have had in our work as both members and leaders of learning communities.  Through Steve and his peers, we’re able to share first-hand accounts of what life really looks like inside a developing PLC. 

Our stories are followed by research on organizational theory that explain the hows and whys of change in human organizations and sets of practical recommendations on action steps that teams in different stages of collective growth can take to move forward together.  We draw explanations from noted thinkers like Philip Ball, Clay Shirky, Roland Barth, James Surowiecki and Kerry Patterson. 

Readers learn about the ways that technology can decrease transaction costs, how phase transitions in physics—think water moving from room temperature to boiling—can can offer insight into change in school communities, and why the collective intelligence of multiple thinkers always produces better results than individuals working alone. 

Each chapter ends with sets of handouts—which are all posted online at Solution Tree’s website—that can be used to structure the work of learning teams.  You’ll find everything from surveys designed to collect information on team development and trust between colleagues to tools for helping teachers to make good decisions and to resolve conflict with peers. 

So far, our book has been well-received!  Rick and Becky DuFour were impressed enough to allow Parry and I to publish our title under their “PLC at Work” brand.  They also shared their excitement for the potential of our text in the introduction to our book, where they wrote:

One of the most common questions we hear from educators who become willing to implement the PLC concept in their own schools is, “But where do we start?”

Graham and Ferriter have answered that question, very specifically, in this powerful book. It is a wonderful contribution to the literature on Professional Learning Communities at Work, and we highly recommend it to educators at all levels who recognize that the practices of the past are inadequate to meet the challenges of the present.

(page xii)

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work has also caught the attention of one of my PLC heroes, Anne Jolly—author of Team to Teach:  A Facilitator’s  Guide to Professional Learning Communities, the newly-revised version of a text that saved my learning team from self-destruction almost five years ago.  In reviewing our text on Amazon, Anne wrote:

"What a terrific resource! The authors have done a great job of organizing this book - starting each chapter with a real-life story and ending with a set of practical tools that have been well thought-out. The "Tools for 21st Century Learning Teams" is a tremendously useful addition.

This book is well-designed, well-written, and packed with useful information. I can see myself using it in my own work with professional learning teams. Kudos to the authors! You've given educators a practical and engaging resource!"

I was also honored when Larry Ferlazzo, one of the most respected members of my personal learning network, found Building a PLC at Work valuable.  Larry writes:

"Through his book, I’ve learned that [PLCs are] basically about strategically and intentionally developing a “community of learners” among school staff.

Bill and his co-author Parry Graham have put together a very accessible step-by-step guide on how to go about creating this kind of culture, including ways to trouble-shoot potential challenges. The questions that it encourages readers to ask themselves and their colleagues might be the most important parts of the book."

In the end, I’m proud of what Parry and I have produced and I sincerely hope that it helps other teachers and school leaders who are struggling to make professional learning communities work in their own buildings. 

As a guy who has had his own professional career completely changed by the opportunity to work closely with motivated colleagues, I know how important—and empowering—PLCs can be when they are done right.  Our goal as authors has always been to show others what “right” looks like in action.

If you happen to read BPLC at Work, I’d love to hear what you think of it!  Be sure to leave me a comment with your feedback.  As a long-time blogger, I recognize the collective power that rests in the minds of my audience. 

Rock right on,

Bill

Questioning Practice in a PLC

PLC expert Rick DuFour has started an interesting strand of conversation over at the All Things PLC blog this morning.  Referring to some of the interactions that we had in our recent Voicethread on professional learning communities, Rick wonders why teachers are unwilling to question colleagues engaged in questionable practices. 

He writes:

Not all behavior is professional. Not all ideas are of equal value.

If the very essence of a team is people working interdependently (rather than in isolation) to achieve common goals (rather than individual interests) for which members are mutually accountable (rather than every man for himself…then we must have the courage to engage in crucial conversations with one another.

The culture of every organization is determined to a large degree by the worst behavior people are willing to tolerate.

Now, I agree with Rick completely that questioning colleagues in a PLC is a professional responsibility.  Professional learning communities are defined by a collective commitment to ALL students.  No longer are teachers interested only in the 50 kids on their class lists.  Instead, they’re interested in identifying the kinds of practices that can result in learning for EVERY child.

But questioning colleagues is still really, really difficult in most schools!

Final Day: DuFour Conversation

It's hard to believe, but TODAY is the last day for participants to jump in to our conversation (see here) on the nuts-and-bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour---authors of Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work.  After three days of brilliance from dozens of commenters, I feel good about what we've learned together.

If you're looking to get caught up on our conversation quickly, check out our summary posts (see here and here).  You can also check out the following strands of conversation which started yesterday:

Joel started an interesting conversation on Slide 3 by introducing participants to the four key ingredients of an authentic community, as detailed by Shane Hipps.  Those key ingredients include a shared history, permanence, proximity and a shared imagination of the future.  What we're wrestling with now is which of the traits PLCs tend to neglect the most often.  

(My answer:  Permanence.  That's plain hard in a profession where turnover is the norm!)

On slide 4---where we've been wrestling with common assessments---Parry detailed a conversation that he had with a group of social studies teachers today.  He wrote: "One of the things that they are finding is that their students are quite good at spitting back facts, but that they struggle with more open-ended questions...

So these social studies teachers are now beginning to create more open-ended assessments, and they are planning to track how their students do on these assessments, looking for patterns within and across classes. What is particularly satisfying is that these actions on the part of the SS teachers are a direct result of their collaborative conversations and decisions to create common assessments."

What's satisfying to me about this interaction between Parry---who is a building principal---and his teachers is that Parry has made pursuing alternative forms of assessment safe for his teachers by being involved in the conversation.  While this may seem to be a subtle step, it will have a huge impact on the willingness of the learning teams in his building to be inventive when it comes to assessing students.  

The fact of the matter is that there is HUGE pressure on classroom teachers to prepare students from end of grade exams.  Deviating from multiple choice assessments is just plain risky---a gamble that many teams are unwilling to take without the explicit permission and support of their building principals.  

The lesson to be learned from Parry's actions:  If you want your learning teams to experiment, take the time to explicitly support experimentation.  Doing so will give your teams a much-needed boost of confidence.

On slide 6, Andrew---who wins the "furthest afield award" after joining us from Cairo, Egypt---details the important role that collaboration around common assessments play in the professional growth of his teachers and the learning of his students.  He writes: "The practice of identifying essential learnings in a course or unit and using ongoing formative assessment as well as periodic summative checkpoints has helped our grade level subject area teams better understand how their students can get to, "Got It!" 

Andrew's comments pushed me into the confessional, where I made an admission that still embarrasses me:  I knew little about my required curriculum before working with my learning team to develop common assessments.  

To that point in my career, I'd made instructional decisions based on what I liked to teach, what other teachers thought was important to teach, and what the textbook laid out for my students to learn.  It was only after we sat down to determine the skills that we wanted to cover on common assessments that I really began to wrestle with what exactly was in my curriculum.  

Which leaves me wondering how many other teachers are wrapped up in the same assessment nightmare.  I can't be the only guy who had a thin grasp on what it was students were supposed to be learning, can I?

The takeaway for school leaders:  Not only can common assessments improve the quality of student learning in your building, they can improve the depth of knowledge that the teachers on your learning team have about the topics that they are supposed to be teaching.  

How's that for a win-win?

So stop by Voicethread today, huh? 

Find a way to contribute to this conversation before it closes to comments at 5:00 today!  While you'll always be able to access the dialogue and share the link with colleagues, this is your last chance to lend your thoughts to the collective knowledge we're building together. 

DuFour Conversation Highlights, Day 2

Have you had a chance to stop by our ongoing Voicethread conversation on the nuts-and-bolts of structuring professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour yet? 

If you haven't, you're missing one of the most amazing opportunities to learn more about professional learning communities. 

Not only are participants like Dan and Joel asking the kinds of provocative questions that make a guy think, Rick and Becky have been incredibly active in our conversation (and generous with their time!), providing the same kind of practical advice and suggestions that fill their newest book, Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work. 

Every time that I stop by the conversation, I learn something new----and learning something new ain't half bad!

If you're looking to get caught up quickly, check out this summary of yesterday's comments.   You might also be interested in these highlights from today's conversation: 

Slide 2 sees participants engaging in a great conversation about the role that formative assessments play in the professional learning community process.  Responding to Joel, who worried that common assessments limit a student's ability to demonstrate mastery of critical content, Rick DuFour laid out a powerful argument for developing a balanced approach to assessing students that includes more than one measure of student mastery. 

Which has me wondering how many learning teams do a good job balancing the types of assessments that they use to measure student understanding.  I know that our learning team probably over-relies on multiple choice assessments simply because multiple choice assessments make data quick and easy to collect. 

But I haven't spent enough time thinking about what the consequences of an over-reliance on one type of assessment really are. 

(Note to self:  This is an area where my learning team can improve our practice!)

Slide 4 is an important slide for district level leaders to visit because when answering a question asked by Parry Graham (the co-author of my new book on PLCs), Rick lays out three key criteria that successful district-level leaders do in order to facilitate the work of the learning teams in their districts.  What makes Rick's response so interesting is that it is drawn from research that he's just completed on three districts doing great things with professional learning communities.
 
On Slide 6, Joel---who has challenged my thinking more than once in our conversation so far---asks a question that feeds right into my digital brain when he writes, "Clayton Christensen suggests in his book Disrupting Class that the next trend in education will move us toward individualized instruction and individualized assessment through computer software. As software improves, educators will play the roles of learning monitors and learning trouble-shooters, rather than instructors and assessors. Can the PLC model accomodate this shift in paradigm?"

Great question, huh?  Joel is right in his argument that the cutting edge thinkers about education would like to see digital tools used to individualize instruction for EVERY student...and my guess is that someday, we'll get to the point where that is more non-fiction than science-fiction. 

But what does that mean for PLCs?  

(My slightly pessimistic guess:  My learning team will completely perfect a system of regrouping students to provide remediation at the skill level just about the time when individualizing instruction will be made ridiculously easy by digital workstations!)

On Slide 10, Becky DuFour gives an incredibly thoughtful response to Kerri---a media specialist in Wake County---who asked how schools and districts could structure meaningful professional learning community experiences for singleton teachers.  Becky's answer (which was also right up my professional alley):  Think about electronic teaming!  Why can't digital tools like Skype and Voicethread be used by collaborative partners working across geographical boundaries. 

Honestly, I'd love to see more electronic teaming----not because it is a perfect replacement for human interaction, but because it would give more teachers experience with collaborative tools that are becoming more common in the workplace, and once teachers start using digital tools in their own work, they are bound to be more likely to use the same digital tools in their teaching. 

If you haven't stopped by our conversation yet, you should!  Here's the direct link.  I guarantee that you'll learn something.

If you have stopped by already, here's your day three challenge:  Rather than posting something new to the conversation today, go in and find a comment made by another participant to respond to.  It could be something that made you think.  It could be something you completely disagree with.  It could be something that you want to know more about.

Make today a day of interaction by interacting with an existing participant. 

After all, that's what good collaborative dialogue looks like in action, right?

DuFour Conversation Highlights: Day 1

So our conversation on professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour has gotten off to a great start, seeing librarians, school principals, professional developers and classroom teachers stopping by to learn and to lend advice. 

Here are some highlights:

On slide four, Rick and Becky argue that one of the primary responsibilities of a school leader in a learning community is to maintain a "laser-like focus" on student learning.  My question for school leaders is a simple one:  Is maintaining that laser-like focus easy?  What barriers end up distracting you from a focus on student learning?

Better yet, what do you do to make it clear to everyone in your school community that student learning is your first priority?

Slide 5 sees participants tackling a familiar topic:  Finding opportunities to celebrate successes and to keep momentum moving forward.  Melissa Smith, however, brought an interesting twist to the celebration conversation when she mentioned her school's tendency to celebrate missteps, too!  

She writes, "One of our school's staff commitments is to celebrate success as well as missteps on our quest towards improving student learning and achievement.  As we see it, you cant make mistakes if you are not trying anything new, so last year  along with kuddos at staff meetings and the sharing of grade level success with SMART goals, we also had a party, sparkling cider, cake and noise makers to celebrate the mistakes we'll never have to make again!"

(I'm stealing that one, Melissa!)

On Slide 7, Dan Greenberg---a professional developer from Houston---brings an interesting question to the group when he asks, "In what ways do those of you who function within PLCs formatively assess your PLC practices?"  I'm not sure about you, but my own professional learning community doesn't spend nearly enough time assessing our PLC practices----so I'm looking forward to hearing the ideas that other participants share for measuring the progress of PLCs. 

On Slide 9,  Mr. Monkey---who wins the award for best Voicethread identity name---has all of us thinking because he sounds professionally exhausted.  Frustrated by a learning team that runs contrary to his own deeply held beliefs about teaching and learning, he's chosen to step away from his team for the time being. 

The question worth considering is what can school leaders do to make sure that motivated teachers like the Monkey----who could be champions for PLCs in their corners of a school---never feel so frustrated or exhausted that they are ready to give up?

A pointer for participants:  Many users have asked whether it is possible for one person to leave more than one comment on each slide.  The answer is yes---and I hope you will!  Ongoing dialogue between participants around one concept is what makes a conversation healthy.

When you do, though, you won't see a new icon added around our focusing quote.  In order to keep a slide from getting cluttered with icons, whenever a participant adds a second comment to a slide, Voicethread adds the comment to the conversation without adding a new icon. 

Other participants will know that you've added a second comment by looking at the timeline found beneath each slide, where they will see a new yellow comment tab.  They will also see a yellow box---and a groovy yellow speech bubble---surrounding your icon.

Here's to hoping that you'll take the time to stop by our conversation before it ends on Friday!  Not only will you learn a ton....we'll learn a ton from you!

DuFour Conversation Starts Today!

Here it is, Radical Nation: The first day in our four-day conversation on the nuts-and-bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities with Solution Tree authors and school change experts Rick and Becky DuFour.

Interested in joining the conversation?

Then click this link:  Enter Revisiting PLCs at Work Conversation 

You might also be interested in this set of directions on how to make digital conversations work for you and this set of directions about how to sign up for a Voicethread account. 

If you struggle at all with your own Voicethread login, you can use this generic login that I created this morning:

Username: billguest@wcpss.net

Password: billguest

You'll find a small box in the bottom left hand corner of the presentation that will let you change to any of a range of generic identity icons.  The only hitch with using this generic login is that only one user is allowed to login under an identity at a time!  If you struggle to get in using the generic login, consider waiting for 20 minutes and then coming back.

Something to know about navigating Voicethread conversations:

While working in a Voicethread conversation, participants can choose to hit the "Play" button at the bottom of any particular slide and watch the conversation around that slide from beginning to end.  That's probably the best strategy the first time you stop by our conversation with Rick and Becky because you'll get to hear my opening questions, Rick and Becky’s initial responses, and the thinking of other participants.

As you revisit pages, however----something you should do once or twice over the course of the week to see how conversations are developing----you can click on new icons surrounding the quotes that you are interested in to hear new comments that have been added.  You can also click on individual comments in the "Timeline" bar that appears at the bottom of each slide.

By doing so, you won't have to listen to every comment every time that you stop by our conversation!  Instead, you can focus your attention on the thoughts of new participants or participants you’re most interested in learning from.

Let's knock this out of the park, huh?

Take some time in the next four days to add what you know, to allow your thinking to be challenged and to challenge the thinking of others.  Be committed to walking away from this conversation with new information that you can use to push your building forward.

Professional learning communities can be powerful tools for driving change in our buildings, but only when the pieces are laid in place properly---and the first step towards assembling the puzzle is building shared knowledge together. 

Voicethread can help us to do that together.

Need MORE Proof that PLCs Work?

Regular Radical readers know that PLCs have been front-and-center in my mind for the past few days.  After all, we’re going to spend time talking about the nuts and bolts of restructuring traditional schools as professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour next week (see here, here and here). 

That’s why a new study released in August by the National Bureau of Economic Research caught my eye this week.  Titled Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other:  The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers, the report documents the impact that adding high-quality teachers to a school community has on student achievement across an entire grade level. 

What study authors C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann discovered after plowing through eleven years of data on North Carolina schoolchildren is something that experts have long documented in other professions:  There is a significant “spillover effect” in teaching, meaning that educators benefit from being exposed to the knowledge and skills of their more accomplished peers. 

  by  Kyle May 

And those benefits translate into statistically significant learning gains for students.  “For the average educator teaching in a grade with three other teachers,” writes Education Week’s Debra Vaidero, who reviewed Jackson and Bruegmann’s study in this online article, “replacing one peer with a more effective one has a spillover effect of .86 percent of a standard deviation on students’ test scores.”

For those of us who have spent the better part of the past decade working in professional learning communities, these results are no great surprise.  We know that exposure to the instructional strategies of our peers has an impact on student learning across our hallways.

But (still more) concrete, statistical evidence of the impact that teachers can learn from their peers might just be the lever that we need in order to encourage education's holdouts---from skeptical teachers to doubtful professional developers---to believe in the power of professional learning communities.   

Perhaps these results will lead to a willingness on the part of superintendents and building principals to set aside their penchant for programs and to invest in collaborative teams as the only form of “professional development” in their schools and districts.  Perhaps it will lead to a willingness on the part of parents and community leaders to make more time on-the-clock for teachers to work closely with their peers.

And perhaps---as the study authors suggest---it will lead to efforts to refocus the way that we evaluate performance in schools.  Instead of looking at the effectiveness of individuals, which creates inherently isolated or competitive situations, we’ll begin to look at the effectiveness of collaborative teams, which will encourage the kinds of cooperation that can lead to higher levels of learning for all students.

Anyone else happy to have more tangible proof that PLCs work?

Reviewing Revisiting PLCs at Work

In preparation for our upcoming four-day focused conversation with Rick and Becky DuFour on the nuts and bolts of transforming traditional schools into dynamic professional learning communities (see here and here), I wanted to review their newest book, Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work for you.

Here are my thoughts:

A little over six years ago, I walked into an interview that changed who I am as an educator.  Matt Wight—one of North Carolina’s finest principals—had been given the opportunity to open a brand new middle school and I wanted to work for him in the worst way.

Why?  Because it was five minutes away from home, of course!  Why else?

It wasn’t long, though, before I realized that working at Salem Middle School was going to be unlike any experience that I’d ever had in my 10-year career.  “We’re going to do things a bit differently,” Matt told me from the moment I walked in the door.

“We’re going to work to become a professional learning community.”

A Conversation on PLCs with the DuFours!

About two years ago, I had one of the singular most exciting moments of my professional career. 

At a dinner meeting designed to introduce the members of our State’s Board of Education to the core principles of professional learning communities, Rick and Becky DuFour---who, along with Bob Eaker, were the guests of honor---recognized me because of my writing!

(Download Slide_PLC_EasyButton)

“Are you the Bill Ferriter who wrote a terrific piece in the Journal for Staff Development a few years back about how professional learning communities have changed who you are as teacher?”  asked Becky in front of the entire room of policymakers and juiceholders. 

“It’s a great article that we use in our work all the time!”

(Not bad for a guy who is “just a classroom teacher” huh?!)

Since then, Rick and Becky have been incredibly supportive, celebrating and encouraging my professional growth as both a writer and a speaker on professional learning communities. 

Most recently, they’ve authored the introduction to my first book, titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Work, graciously allowing my co-author and I to publish our title under their own PLC at Work brand.   (Want to preorder a copy of BPLC?  Here’s the link.) 

That’s why I’m so excited to announce the next in our continuing series of Voicethread conversations here on the Radical: 

Rick and Becky DuFour will be joining us from September 8th – 11th to talk about the nuts and bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities!

Drawing from the insights that Rick, Becky and Bob have polished and published in their newest book—Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work—participants will be able to look inside the minds of two of the foremost experts on sustaining school change from the comfort of their own homes!

While there is certainly no “easy button” for those working to build professional learning communities, pairing the advice of Rick and Becky with the guidance of other participants who are learning by doing, we’re sure to spend four good days building capacity with one another.

Talk about an amazing opportunity to get your building’s learning communities off on the right foot for the 2009-2010 school year, huh?! 

So get the dates on your calendar, create your free Voicethread accounts, and whip up a list of questions that you’d like to see tackled in our time together. 

And stop back often in the next few weeks. 

I’ll be posting a review of Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work alongside a collection of tips and tricks for successful participation in a digital conversation in order to ensure that September 8th – 11th are productive for everyone!