TLN Teacher Voices

Secrets of Successful Learning Teams: An Interview with Anne Jolly

In this interview with author and professional learning teams expert Anne Jolly, you’ll learn at least three things:

• Details of a new edition of her book Team to Teach, a practical guide to organizing and sustaining PLCs and PLTs that promote continuous professional growth.

• Jolly’s eight secrets of PLC success.

• Her answer to the question: If you were asked to create a school reform design, what would its chief components be?

“Effective PLTs are teacher leadership hothouses,” Jolly tells us. “They’re places where teachers increase their professional knowledge and leadership skills – and they can also serve as perfect vehicles for teachers to begin to put leadership into action at several levels.”

NSDC describes Team to Teach as a “step-by-step book…written in plain, easy-to-read language.” Jolly provides backgrounders that set the stage for each of 10 chapters designed to familiarize teacher teams with a proven process that can help them become high-functioning working groups. The book also offers a comprehensive set of tools that facilitators will find useful along the way.

Anne is a second-career teacher who began life as a lab researcher and evolved into an accomplished middle grades science educator — and Alabama’s 1994 Teacher of the Year. A charter member of the Teacher Leaders Network, Anne continues to consult with schools and districts interested in translating the learning-community concept into a viable vehicle for everyday school improvement. We invited her to talk about Team to Teach and the current state of PLC development in American schools.

Continue below to read our conversation and learn more about Team to Teach.

Teaching Beyond the Moment

In another reflection on the school year past, an upper-elementary special education teacher in New England wrote:

There are various levels to my reflecting. There is the surface or situational level. This is the level where I ask myself questions that affected this school year only. Questions like:

• Did I implement best practices that targeted my students’ IEP goals, while aligning with state standards and district grade level curriculum expectations? Check.

• Did I collaborate with colleagues in ways that enhanced the learning for our students? Check.

• Did the students’ academic and social development progress? Check.

• Did I initiate opportunities that helped me strengthen the bridge of communication between home and school? Check.

• Did I participate in meaningful professional development opportunities to guide my learning and growth both personally and professionally? Check.

There are more questions like these, but you get the point. It was a great year, from a big-picture point of view.

Then there’s my never-ending situational reflection, which happend day by day as I teach through the year. This is deeper and shifts me toward asking questions such as: How is what I am doing helping this child for tomorrow and beyond?

As a special education teacher in inclusion settings, it is easy to get caught up in driving the curriculum. This never felt right for me, but each year is a new year of swimming against the tide because I must work with colleagues who are definitely driven by the curriculum schedule, the testing schedule, the contrived teacher guides, and their grade books.

It’s my job to swim right alongside, yet I am constantly feeling the urgency to teach beyond the moment. As I reflect on this year, I can say I am proud that I never tired when striving to find the balance between my “teach beyond the moment” philosophy and some of my colleagues’ “teach for a grade...or a test...or just keep driving the curriculum along” philosophy. Even so, disappointments did occur.

We taught math every morning. We balanced whole class lessons with small group lessons and, when needed, individual instruction. Yet I was still up against that “learn this for a grade” philosophy. A few students did poorly on a practice test. Following the completion of their work, my co-teacher had the students switch papers and grade one another’s (ugh).

Once the “grade” was given, the students reviewed their work. My co-teacher and I worked with students one-to-one to provide additional examples. The first student was so disappointed that he did not get a good “grade.” With encouragement and determination, he attended to this reteaching session. I began to see the spark in his eyes. He had that moment that all teachers love to see…and he said, “Oh, yeah! I get it!” He was able to apply this knowledge by completing a few more problems. I worked to get his focus on his effort and determination, not the grade. He was beaming. I was thrilled.

Next came the moment when he was able to self-correct his practice test. The beam in his eyes was still present, but dimming as he walked back to me to hand in his self-corrections. I continued to focus on how proud he should be of his efforts and determination. I mentioned that this is exactly what all successful students need to do every time they learn. He looked like he wanted to say something. I asked him what he thought about what I said, and he answered, “That’s good. But what is my grade?” Sigh.

Grades are important. I understand that. Yet this student's love of learning is being squashed by the fact that he is mixed up in striving for grades that just put a number on the moment. His learning differences require him to work harder than his same-aged peers. In addition to teaching the facts, I have strongly focused on providing him with strategies to encourage and empower his learning process. However, the emphasis placed on grades and learning "just for the moment" (or the big test) was far too great in this situation for me to overcome. But I will continue to strive to helps students find the balance, working to guide the transfer of their confidence and knowledge to future situations.

My focus is not only the product, but the process. This can be a sensitive area when the world of special education and general education merge within the integrated classroom.

Schools on the Brink

A brief reflection on the 2008-09 school year, from a middle grades teacher in Los Angeles:

When I reflect beyond my own classroom, I grow increasingly concerned about how next year will play out as we grapple with teacher layoffs and a state economy on the brink of collapse. Based on seniority, we're losing one of our terrific young sixth grade teachers and retaining a teacher whose students cuss at him and charge out of class with regularity. We're losing two of our administrators, our special ed coordinator, and our literacy coach to other schools because of layoffs and seniority issues.

And I continue to resent and reflect on how often I see the words "bad teachers" in local newspapers. Another one today...

NPR (June 17): LA's Urban Schools Hardest Hit by Teacher Layoffs

Reflecting on My Teaching Year

When Larry asked “What are your reflections on this past school year?” several teachers in the TLN Forum discussion group offered up their thoughts. We’ll post several of these over the summer.

Marsha, a middle grades math and science teacher, wrote:

My idea that if I taught lots of open-ended problems that my kids would still OK on the math state assessment came true. I didn't count any of these kinds of open-ended activities for grades because they aren't officially a part of our curriculum. Kids still did the work and the practice, and they learned to concentrate on what they were learning instead of their grade. I will repeat this work again.

My idea that by incorporating lots more data collection devices in my science classes I would advance scientific curiosity was accurate. They loved the probeware. They inquired, tested and became much more capable of posing testable questions and answering them.

One story: I had been using different kinds of probeware in science class, and the kids were beginning to catch on to how you study things. We decided to tape our probes to the surface of globes and have all sorts of different suns (50 watt bulb, 100 watt bulb, etc.) and compare the temperature differences at the equator, the poles and in our midwestern state, using different powers of Sun. They didn't think there would be any data to answer our questions. But when they had all their graphs displaying on the board, they were truly excited. Excited about data! Hurray! Even more, they were convinced they could someday become scientists. The kids that aren't very good at science felt like they understood what was happening and could explain it. It was probably one of the most satisfying teaching experiences of the year because the results made the investment of time worth it. I had about 6 kids who went home and did extension investigations on their own and then brought in data for us to examine.

I didn’t do so well with my idea that I could help foster a love for reading non-fiction and that it would influence their science writing. I felt like my lessons were always just a tad off-target, which kept us from building any momentum or enthusiasm. I need to regroup, rethink and consider if I might not capable of doing this. Maybe just re-calibrating is necessary.

Our grade-level community service projects were successful, and we added a new project. We partnered with Room to Read using a Read-A-Thon and ended up raising $2500 to build a library room in Cambodia. Our kids were completely into it and much of the money (their money, not their folks) came in the form of pennies, nickels and crumpled-up dollar bills. We supported holiday gift bags for six children in foster and group homes. We were able to deliver over 15 large 33-gallon bags filled with many of the basics (new undergarments, bedding, coats and shoes) and we fulfilled all their wishes for presents. And in addition we collected over 13 barrels of food for the nearby food kitchen. I know our kids are lucky to have so much, and in these times, they needed to use their abundance to help others. They did so with enthusiasm, graciousness and big hearts. They learned to organize each other and feel like they can make a difference in the world.

My biggest failure (but one where I learned a ton) was implementing the Argumentation and Evaluation protocol. It was supposed to help me foster better discourse and teach my kids how to critically evaluate articles and lab data. While I do think it worked with lab data, my kids didn't read at a high enough level to be able to use the techniques effectively with scientific articles. It's my first NSF grant, and I'm glad I did this for many reasons even if the technique wasn't as viable as I’d hoped.

New questions I'm pondering: Can I really ever figure out how to improve their writing in science? How can I get our community service spirit to extend to other grade levels within our building? How can I get other teams to see that the whole child is just as important as test scores?

It was a great year. I grew so much as a collaborating partner with my math job-alike colleague. I felt like I did a good job of balancing test prep and whole-child education, we did fantastic community service projects, and my kids tore it up on the state assessments.