pop quiz, part 2

re: pop quiz

Try this forced-choice exercise: if a principal wants to improve the quality of
teaching and learning in his or her school, which three of these will have the greatest
impact?

• Observing and evaluating full lessons, preceded by a pre-conference with each teacher and followed by a detailed write-up and post-conference;
• Systematic walkthroughs of the entire school focusing on target areas (for example, the quality of student work on bulletin boards);
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;
• Quick “drive-by” visits to all classrooms every day to greet students and “manage by walking around”;
• Collecting and checking over teachers’ lesson plans every week;
• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.

What's a Principal to Do? When You Can’t Do It All, What Are the Highest-Leverage Activities?  by Kim Marshall
Education Week September 20, 2006

Ed, who teaches at the university level, instantly got the answers:

• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;

I missed 'unit planning,' which was the first answer Ed picked, and the most important one as far as he is concerned.

And what is unit planning?

Unit planning is curriculum, essentially. At least, of the choices above, "unit planning" is the closest to curriculum.

Marshall writes:

Unit planning – When teachers work together to plan multi-week curriculum units (e.g., the Civil War, the solar system, ratio and proportion), working backwards from state standards, “big ideas,” and unit assessments, the result is more thoughtful instruction, deeper student understanding, and, yes, better standardized-test scores. But this kind of curriculum design is rare; most teachers plan instruction forward, one day or week at a time, and write their unit tests and final exams just before students take them. Principals can counteract this natural tendency by providing the training, support, and time for teacher teams to plan units collaboratively, using peer review and robust design standards to constantly improve their work. 

Of course, I'm not keen on this model, necessarily: I (think I) prefer the Direct Instruction model, or the textbook model, where the curriculum is designed by disciplinary specialists, writers, and editors who work full-time designing the curriculum.

How is it we have full-time teachers designing and writing curriculum???'

Nevertheless, if we are going to have full-time classroom teachers writing curriculum, then focusing on unit planning as opposed to lesson planning strikes me as a very good idea.

Richard DuFour's innovation (the Professional Learning Community) is typically described as a shift from thinking about teaching (inputs) to thinking about learning (outputs).

But when you get closer to what he actually did, I think you have to argue that he also shifted focus from 'lessons' and 'lesson plans' to curriculum.

Adlai Stevenson High School

On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum is affluent Adlai Stevenson High School—a one-school district in the Chicago area. Students and teachers there worked in the same team-based professional learning communities and benefited from the same honest, tough-minded leadership advocated here. They relied exclusively on in-house expertise as teams met, by course, to share and prepare lessons and units that they continuously improved on the basis of common, team-made assessment results. Over a 10-year period, under the leadership of Richard DuFour, Stevenson broke every achievement record on school, state, and college entrance exams. Advanced placement success increased by 800 percent (Schmoker, 2001b).

Results Now
by Mike Schmoker
Introduction: The Brutal Facts About Instruction and Its Supervision

I've spent a good two years trying to interest my district in, say, just finding out what it was Richard DuFour actually did at Adlai Stevenson High School.

No sale.

Though I'm told we do now have a professional learning community room at the high school. Apparently there's a sign on the door that says: "professional learning community."

I've gotta get a picture of that.