TLN Teacher Voices

A Book to Inspire a Culture of Trust and Build Teacher Community

Protocols for Professional Learning (The Professional Learning Community Series)
By Lois Brown Easton
(2009, ASCD)

Reviewed by Michael Fisher
Instructional Coach and Consultant (New York)
Teacher Leaders Network

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review Lois Brown Easton’s book on Professional Learning Protocols. It is a book that I know will have an impact on my own practice as a staff developer, and I’ve already used and shared many ideas from the text.
   
Because I work with schools helping teachers to set up Professional Learning Networks, both in-house and digitally, this book is specifically geared to my work with fellow educators. Many times, when I go into schools, teachers have not had much of an opportunity to meet in collegial groups, and they are satisfied with the “island mentalities” they have been allowed to cultivate over many years. This leads to not only missed opportunities, but also to feelings of inadequacy and a sense of constantly being under attack for failing to do this or that.

Easton’s career includes 15 years as a teacher, and long service as a curriculum leader and professional developer in Arizona and Colorado, including work with the Coalition of Essential Schools. In her introduction, she promises that through the use of protocols, teacher communities can “achieve trust and create a culture that is essential for collaborative work on issues of substance.” Schools can’t wait for a perfect culture to begin using protocols, she says. Instead, “it is through their use that the culture will develop and trust will emerge.”

Protocols, Easton tells us, are:

• Processes that help groups achieve deep understanding through dialogue.
   
• Structures for groups that allow them to explore ideas deeply through student work, artifacts of educator practice, texts relating to education, or problems and issues that surface during the day-to-day lives of educators.
   
• Guidelines for conversation based on norms that everyone agrees upon in order to make the dialogue safe and effective.
   
• A facilitated set of steps which everyone understands and has agreed to that permits a kind of conversation that people don't usually have when they discuss things.
   
• A constructivist approach to discussion that allows for deep development of ideas as certain people talk while others listen and then the talkers listen and the listeners talk, with each round characterized by reflection and exploration.
   
• A way for educators to build collaborative communities, sometimes called critical friends groups (CFGs) or professional learning communities (PLCs).

 Over the course of six chapters, Easton then explores the whats and whys of protocols and how they can be put to use to examine student work and professional practice, to address learning issues and problems, and to promote effective professional discussions. Each chapter describes various protocols in step-by-step detail. (See sample chapters here.)

The protocols in this book help to inspire the atmosphere and culture of trust and collegiality that is necessary to open and maintain conversations among teachers. When there is a framework of understanding, and a foundation of value for everyone’s participation and unique voice, it helps everyone move forward.
   
Besides the great examples she describes, Easton creates a defining framework around protocols and how they should be used. This supplies teachers and meeting leaders with detailed tools from which they can choose to facilitate different types of gatherings, whether the purpose is to share ideas, analyze a specific problem, or deal with something unpleasant in an honest but supportive way.
   
I especially liked that the author included a section on protocols to use with students. I am always being asked what I think about the peer review or peer collaboration process and what resources I have. Using protocols is a perfect way to examine, review, revise and discuss student work. The protocols listed facilitate both student to student interactions and teacher to student interactions.
   
This book also contains protocols for examining professional practice and for addressing issues and problems. Out of these, I found the Success Analysis protocol to be immediately useful, and have used it several times in professional development recently with wildly successful results. In fact, I just proposed to another staff developer that she may want to include a reference in her new book to this particular tool, as the content she is writing about is quite conducive to using protocols.
   
Overall, I see Protocols for Professional Learning as very necessary to the field and unique in its delivery. It’s short (70 pp.) and to the point and written in such a way as to be immediately useful to practitioners, be they teachers or administrators. It could also be useful, in part, to students, as they construct ways to be mutually supportive but also understand that all voices are necessary and needed. I was impressed and excited by what I read, and look forward to more from Lois Brown Easton and ASCD’s Professional Learning Community series.

I Want to Belong to This Club!

A Sense of Belonging: Sustaining and Retaining New Teachers
By Jennifer Allen
(2009, Stenhouse Publishers)

Reviewed by Marti Schwartz
Teacher, Novice-Teacher Educator (Rhode Island)
Teacher Leaders Network

I loved this book! When I began reading it in early September, I approached it through the lens of a coach/mentor for a group of novice teachers who spent a week with me in a seminar this past summer. From that perspective, I found the subtitle intriguing and hoped for good advice.

Shortly thereafter, in a moment of optimism, I agreed to come out of semi-retirement and signed on for a totally new professional experience: after 32 years of elementary teaching, I was suddenly facing urban high school students on a daily basis — as a quasi-novice!

These two roles — new-teacher mentor and rookie high school teacher — kept me reading Allen’s book, when I could find time to breathe. As each chapter unfolded yet another piece of the support plan under which Allen operates, I found myself wishing that I could magically whisk away and live in her town and work in her school, under her guidance.

The program that Allen and her Maine district (Waterville Public Schools) has established is one that sounds so reasonable and supportive that one can only wonder why this isn’t being practiced everywhere. If, as Allen says, “almost 50 percent of all new teachers leave our profession after only five years,”(research cited on p. 3), then our educational system is wasting a tremendous amount of time and energy by not supporting novices everywhere more fully. To keep retraining new recruits while five years of experience walks out the door is just plain foolish.

Allen makes it look simple: set up a routine that supports teachers with monthly meetings, assistance in planning, time to observe others, and guidance in teaching their own classes. She makes no mention of how this is all funded, and one wonders how, in these difficult times, the district is able to support each of these pieces. And, though she offers many inspiring stories of those novices, she does not offer any data about the retention rate of the new teachers in her district. But these are peripheral issues; the blueprint she offers is one that seems sound, replicable and intriguing.

Writing in a collegial, inviting style, Allen offers many stories of her own past experiences as a new teacher as well as examining the athletic adventures of her children and herself through the lens of the teaching and learning that takes place in the hands of a gifted coach. Her stories are spot on — we can easily grasp the guidance and wisdom being offered, even before she points it out.

The plan of teacher support is frequent, intensive, individualized, and brilliant. As a literacy coach Allen works, first, to build relationships with new teachers even before the school year begins (just as many of us try to connect with our students mid-summer, to ease their anxiety and generate their enthusiasm for the tasks ahead). Once a month new teachers are released for the day — spending the morning observing in classrooms, and the afternoons debriefing and planning, with guidance and support.

Allen works “in a first-year teacher’s classroom three times a week for at least 45 minutes, and supports them in their second or third year at least once a week or as needed.” (p. 6) This gives her the opportunity to get to know the students (and their demands or quirks) on an immediate basis, and allows the novice the chance to see a seasoned teacher work with her own students — sometimes experiencing the same challenges that she herself has faced. In partnership with a well-prepared coach, the novice can learn multiple ways to handle those challenges from a practitioner who has dealt with many, many challenging students and classrooms in the past.

Giving and interpreting assessments and using student work to guide instruction are key learning goals for novice teachers under Allen’s wing. Again, teachers are given two days out of their classroom (for fall and spring assessments) to administer, score, and analyze the assessments. For those of us who have tried to balance such work while teaching at the same time — this seems like heaven!

“The second and third years of teaching are an opportunity for new teachers to define themselves as educators. I see these years as an opportunity for new teachers to refine instructional practice and put together the pieces of the curriculum,” states Allen (p.59), noting that she continues “to support them in a way that nurtures them to become the teacher they want to be.” While Allen certainly has some ideas as a literacy coach of what “best practice” looks like, she seems wise enough to enable teachers to discover what it looks like for them.

Allen supports her teachers in other ways: providing them with student-sized dry erase boards, microcassette recorders, mentor texts, books to add to classroom libraries, writer’s notebooks, and other classroom supplies. Having spent 30 years in a suburban public school system, I must report that almost all of those supplies came out of teachers’ own wallets. But we also didn’t have a literacy coach, or someone who so passionately, wisely, devotes her time to ensuring that good things are happening in ALL classrooms, not just a chosen few. Should your own school experience be less supportive, reading through A Sense of Belonging will give you many concrete ideas about ways to improve your own literacy instruction, begin a study group, or venture into the realm of classroom visitations.

What Allen has given her novices is the gift of time: time to talk, reflect, observe, share, grow and learn, all with gentle, appropriate support. Additionally, the time is built into the novices’ teaching lives — professional growth does not require that precious moments be stolen from their non-existent “free time.”

What Allen has given to all of us is a powerful model of strengthening the practice of novice teachers, in a book that is enjoyable to read and inspiring to emulate. “New teachers are establishing lifelong habits of collaboration and reflection…” (p.91), she writes. And I have to agree: her novice colleagues, their students, and the educational system of Waterville, Maine, will surely reap the benefits for decades to come.

Never Work Harder Than Your Students (review)

Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching
by Robyn R. Jackson
ASCD (2009)

Reviewed by Gail Tillery, NBCT
High School English & Mentoring (Georgia)
Teacher Leaders Network

I must confess I was a little disappointed that this book did not turn out to contain the magic secret of getting past the hard work of teaching. However, Robyn Jackson does offer many practical tips for helping proficient teachers move to what she calls the master teacher level, so the book is definitely worth reading.

Jackson builds her work on the premise that the most effective teachers have what she calls “the master teacher mindset.” This mindset is built around a set of seven principles that Jackson says master teachers use to guide their practice. Each chapter of the book is built around exploring one of these principles, including

• knowing where students are and where they are going
• expecting students to reach their goals
• supporting students through effective feedback
• focusing on quality rather than quantity

The master teacher mindset is centered around reflective practice; master teachers work in such a way that the principles become automatic to them, and they use these principles constantly to design the work and assessments they prepare for students.

Jackson believes that a teacher's work should be done at the front end, as it were. She advocates becoming an expert on the standards of the given course and using that expertise to design work that challenges students and helps them reach their learning goals. She gives practical advice on understanding standards by helping her readers interpret their language. For example, she explains that standards emphasize either learning goals or a process (content vs. skills). Once teachers understand exactly what the standards are asking students to know and be able to do, they can assign work and assessments to help students meet the standards.

One of the most interesting and challenging ideas Jackson presents is that teachers should be able to explain why they are doing each activity and assessment they chose. She urges teachers to ask themselves, “Why am I doing what I'm doing?” If students ask you why they're doing an activity, and you can't give them an answer that makes sense, the activity must go.

Another interesting idea Jackson develops is Principle 3: ”Expect Your Students to Get There.” She discusses the point of view that I have heard all my life among colleagues: that some students can't or won't do the work because they’re lazy or don’t care or whatever, and there's really nothing we can do to change that. Jackson, however, believes that expectations are really all about what we expect of ourselves—not of our students.

She asks us as readers to shift focus from what students can and will do to what WE can and will do. She says that teachers must have high expectations of their own abilities to get their students where they need to go. She points out that, if we say students can't acquire knowledge or develop skills, we're really saying we don't believe WE can get them to the learning goal in question.

Jackson also gives practical guidelines for effective feedback in Principle 4: ”Support Your Students.” A firm believer in intervening before disaster strikes, she provides ideas on how to help students as soon as you see that a problem is developing. Undoing confusion before it starts is a proactive approach that allows teachers to anticipate and head off the damage before it happens. This was one of my favorite principles.

Jackson's book includes a self-assessment for readers to complete so they will know where they are in relation to the master teacher mindset. In the appendix, she includes an array of tools to help teachers develop action plans to help them move toward the mastery of teaching. The toolbox is user-friendly and provides concrete help for teachers who wish to pursue Jackson's line of thinking.

While I didn't agree with everything in the book, I found Jackson's passion for teaching and her obvious belief in all students to be inspiring and refreshing. This book is an easy read but also thought-provoking and full of ideas to aid teachers in helping students to excel. It is definitely worth looking into.

Review: Strength-Based School Improvement

Building Teachers' Capacity for Success by Pete Hall & Alisa Simeral, ASCD (2008)

Reviewed by Ellen Holmes, NBCT

The authors of Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success do not sugar coat what sort of diet the teaching profession will need if it is going to get into shape. They are not afraid to challenge long-held notions regarding tenure, differences in teacher quality, and the measurement of success.

Just as any good doctor will tell a patient who wants to change their weight, it takes time, persistence of focus, and actually doing the things that we know are good for us. Many of us have searched for “silver bullets” to speed along this health improvement – we have focused on buying products and programs – but have not focused on changing daily, life-long habits. As a result, we almost always fall far short of our goal.

In the world of school improvement this same pattern of failure exists. We know that the number-one way to improve student learning is to improve teaching, and yet most school improvement efforts are focused on things and programs to teach with. It is the rare case that job-embedded, formative, on-going, needs-based professional development is systematically tailored towards individual teachers. Today’s teachers have more information about how students learn, how to teach, and better tools for measuring student outcomes than any other generation of professionals before them -- but there exists a significant gap between knowing and doing. In Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success, an approach for setting us on a healthful professional path is clearly defined, beginning with the first chapter, "Strength-Based School Improvement."

For perspective, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I am an employee of an NEA state affiliate. I am tasked with supporting schools in the midst of planning and implementing school improvement plans and activities. In these schools there is always a tension between tenure and teacher quality. Because I work in a collective bargaining state, it is not always easy to get the “right people in the right seats on the bus.”

The framework of peer coaching and formative evaluation outlined in Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success certainly seems to provide a promising structure for elevating discussions about teacher quality above the usual frustrated tones that tenure clauses can create. One of the many strengths of this text is that the role of administrators and peer coaches are clearly defined in this framework regarding their roles as leaders. Peer coaches are servant leaders (I read that as “teacher leader”) and administrators are visible leaders. For me, these clear definitions are ones I will now routinely integrate into my professional development sessions.

Although I am a teacher association employee, I am at heart a National Board Certified Teacher concerned with the future of my profession. Professional self-reflection is a part of my own improvement repertoire, and I can personally vouch for the truth that this action is probably the single most important one required for improving teacher quality.

Within Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success, the authors have provided a “continuum of self-reflection.” The book carries the subtitle A Collaborative Approach for Coaches and School Leaders, and it describes how administrators and teacher leaders in coaching positions can use the continuum to determine the best strategies for helping teachers become better practitioners. I believe this would also be an important self-monitoring tool for practicing classroom teachers themselves. Each of these tools and other supporting materials can be downloaded as PDFs from a web source that is unlocked with a provided code. This kind of resource is truly valuable to me and to others who also find themselves engaged in a constant search for better and better tools to help schools improve.

I am left wondering -- dreaming, really – about what would it be like to work in a school where this framework for strength-based school improvement was in place. This is definitely a book I would want my colleagues and administrators to read.

Ellen Holmes is a Distinguished Educator at the Maine Department of Education.

New Teacher Top 10 To-Do's

Our TLN Forum members contribute weekly features to Teacher Magazine, sharing their ideas and insights about both education policy and classroom practice. Each fall we provide a series of Teacher Magazine essays titled Teaching Secrets, aimed specifically at new and novice teachers. Marsha Ratzel wrote two “Secrets” essays this fall, and we thought we share her “extra” one here. Our hope is that we’ll draw the attention of younger and newer teachers to our website devoted to teacher leadership. It’s not just for veterans anymore!

Some context: Marsha teaches middle school math and science in the Kansas heartland. She’s National Board Certified and began her (so far) 17-year teaching journey after a first career in health care administration.

My Top 10 To-Do List for
New Teachers Starting School

by Marsha Ratzel

1. Find your curriculum and read through it several times. Put post-it notes in places where you have questions. Work with the principal to partner with an experienced teacher at least several weeks before school starts to get an overview of the entire year and do serious scrutiny of the first month’s goals.

2. Find all your supporting materials, both student and teacher copies. Know where and how the curriculum and the textbooks match up in a general sense. Do a more thorough matching for the first unit, so you’ll know exactly where and what you’ll be using. Be sure to scan through all the supplemental materials that most publishers provide. This can be overwhelming at the level of fine detail, so go for the big picture snapshot. You can come back later when you see a need if you have some working knowledge of the possibilities.

3. Ask to look over last year’s yearbook. It’s a great place to see the kinds of activities that are important to your new school community. The faculty pictures and names will be there, too. If the school has a newspaper that would be another source for developing a sense of the school identity.

4. Create a birthday list for each class (celebrate half-birthdays for summer birthdays). Decide what small thing you might do to honor that child. Maybe it is a B-Day postcard you send home. Maybe it’s a Free Homework Pass. Maybe it’s a Birthday Pencil. Take the list and group birthdays by month and get everything ready to go for the whole year. Since I use Homework Passes, I put student names and the birthday date on each pass, then hand them out at the start of each month.

5. Develop some sort of impartial method for calling on students. Assigning student numbers and then randomly picking a number works well. You can put the numbers on craft sticks or ping pong balls (some gradebook programs have a student picker option). You may be able to number the desks and call on the student sitting in that desk. However you do it, you’re demonstrating a method that removes bias and gives all students an equal chance to be asked.

6. Figure out how you will capture students on the first day of school. Going over the rules or what they’ll be learning is NOT the way. Think of some easy-to-implement, highly engaging activity to snag their interests and build a bridge between you and them. I always try to give them a sense of who I am, my sense of humor, what I love about my job and them. This helps students relax and realize you are their ally, their partner, their facilitator…not the enemy. The activity has to be structured, though, or it could descend into chaos. It’s a fine balance -- so ask around and see what has worked in the past for other teachers.

7. Design some method to manage and keep track of daily paperwork -- especially for absent students. If you have all of your students regularly asking you for their work, you’ll lose your mind. There are so many options out there. My favorite is to have a hanging folder for each student in every class. If I pass out papers, the student at the front of the row is responsible for filing the handouts for every absent student in the appropriate folder. When the student returns they know they can look in their folder for all their work.

8. Make an appointment to sit down with important building specialists. If your building has a library, see if you can meet with the library media specialist to find out how you can best utilize their resources. Even if the discipline you are teaching doesn’t seem to require library resources, you will be amazed at the things that are possible and available if you only ask.

9. Introduce yourself to the school secretaries, the nurse, the bookkeepers and the paraprofessionals. Most importantly, find out who is going to clean your room and make sure to start building a close relationship with them. Friendliness leads to cleanliness!

10. Decide where and when you will fight your battles. Gum chewing, talking, a failure to bring pencil and paper to class -- these are all potential danger zones. Your rules must adhere to district/school policies AND be supported by your fellow teachers. But that still leaves lots of latitude. For example, our policy leaves gum chewing up to the discretion of each teacher. A teacher needs to know where they stand (vis a vis other teachers) before it becomes an issue with a student. Pencils used to be a constant battle for me. Now I just buy about 1,000 of them during the Back to School supply sales for $5.00. It’s the best $5.00 I could ever spend.

These straightforward, practical tips can help you get off to a good start by smoothing the path to the destination you care about most -- teaching well.