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.

"Confessions of an Instructional Leader"

excerpt from:
The Learning-Centered Principal by Richard DuFour
Educational Leadership - May 2002

When I entered the principalship a quarter century ago, the research on effective schools warned that without strong administrative leadership, the disparate elements of good schooling could be neither brought together nor kept together (Lezotte, 1997). I heeded the message and embraced my role as a strong leader with gusto. I was determined to rise above the mundane managerial tasks of the job and focus instead on instruction—I hoped to be an instructional leader. I asked teachers to submit their course syllabi and curriculum guides so that I could monitor what they were teaching. I collected weekly lesson plans to ensure that teachers were teaching the prescribed curriculum. I read voraciously about instructional strategies in different content areas and shared pertinent articles with staff members.

But my devotion to the clinical supervision process at the school was the single greatest illustration of my commitment to function as an instructional leader. I developed a three-part process that required me to be a student of good teaching and to help teachers become more reflective and insightful about their instruction.

During the pre-observation conference, I met with teachers individually and asked them to talk me through the lesson I would be observing in their classroom. I asked a series of questions, including What will you teach? How will you teach it? What instructional strategies will you use? What instructional materials will you use? During the classroom observation, I worked furiously to script as accurately as possible what the teacher said and did.

During the postobservation conference, the teacher and I reconstructed the lesson from my notes and his or her recollections. We looked for patterns or trends in what the teacher had said and done, and we discussed the relationship between those patterns and the lesson's objectives. Finally, I asked the teacher what he or she might change in the lesson before teaching it again. I then wrote a summary of the classroom observation and our postobservation discussion, offered recommendations for effective teaching strategies, and suggested ways in which the teacher might become more effective.

The observation process was time-consuming, but I was convinced that my focus on individual teachers and their instructional strategies was an effective use of my time. And the process was not without benefits. As a new pair of eyes in the classroom, I was able to help teachers become aware of unintended instructional or classroom management patterns. I could express my appreciation for the wonderful work that teachers were doing because I had witnessed it firsthand. I observed powerful instructional strategies and was able to share those strategies with other teachers. I learned a lot about what effective teaching looks like.

In Hot Pursuit of the Wrong Questions

Eventually, after years as a principal, I realized that even though my efforts had been well intentioned—and even though I had devoted countless hours each school year to those efforts—I had been focusing on the wrong questions. I had focused on the questions, What are the teachers teaching? and How can I help them to teach it more effectively? Instead, my efforts should have been driven by the questions, To what extent are the students learning the intended outcomes of each course? and What steps can I take to give both students and teachers the additional time and support they need to improve learning?

This shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning is more than semantics. When learning becomes the preoccupation of the school, when all the school's educators examine the efforts and initiatives of the school through the lens of their impact on learning, the structure and culture of the school begin to change in substantive ways. Principals foster this structural and cultural transformation when they shift their emphasis from helping individual teachers improve instruction to helping teams of teachers ensure that students achieve the intended outcomes of their schooling. More succinctly, teachers and students benefit when principals function as learning leaders rather than instructional leaders.

[snip]

By concentrating on teaching, the instructional leader of the past emphasized the inputs of the learning process. By concentrating on learning, today's school leaders shift both their own focus and that of the school community from inputs to outcomes and from intentions to results. Schools need principal leadership as much as ever. But only those who understand that the essence of their job is promoting student and teacher learning will be able to provide that leadership.

Professional learning communities: ALL POSTS

AND SEE:
ruining Lemov

pop quiz

re: ruining Lemov

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

ruining Lemov...

from Allison's post:

I've now seen schools ruin Lemov's Teach Like a Champion, too. They do this by using it as a micromanagement tool--lesson plans must look exactly like this, word choice must sound exactly like this, etc. to beat the teachers into submission.

Another timely observation.

I've just learned, via another ktm writer & commenter, that "professional learning communities" can be used to exactly the same end: to insure classroom-to-classroom uniformity.

Every teacher teaches the same lesson the same way.

That's fine when we're talking about a relentlessly field-tested, scripted Direct Instruction curriculum that is built to produce results.

It's not fine when we're talking Inputs instead of Outputs.

The entire point of professional learning communities, as I understand it, the reason they were revolutionary, is that Richard DuFour had the revelation that he should stop thinking about teaching and start thinking about learning. In the "PLCs" he invented, teachers didn't write lessons together. Teachers wrote tests together. They wrote tests together, and they essentially designed the curriculum together, in the sense that they decided what would be taught and when. They met on a regular basis, they worked with the state standards and/or the district's curriculum documents, and they decided which (which!) standards they would teach and when they would teach them.

Which and when, not how.

They taught as they thought best, and gave students the common assessments they had written.

Then they analyzed the results together and adjusted their teaching accordingly. As professionals might do.

As far as I can tell, and I've read a fair bit of DuFour's work, in the original PLC model there was no focus on telling the teachers how to teach. "Stop worrying about how the teachers are teaching" was pretty much DuFour's discovery (as I understand it). He had been a hard-charging "instructional leader," he was working around the clock, observing classrooms, reviewing lesson plans, meeting with teachers to provide feedback, and.... nothing. Same results.

Everything changed when he stopped focusing on how the teachers were teaching:

[DuFour] greatly reduced the time he spent trying, frenetically, to be the consummate, traditional “instructional leader.” Instead, he began to focus on the simple elements of learning communities—ensuring that teams met on a regular schedule and documented their progress on self-made formative assessments. And he honored and celebrated every success at every faculty meeting. These simple steps lightened his load, gave him focus, and led to years of dramatic, uninterrupted progress on every kind of assessment— from teacher-made tests, to state assessments, to college entrance exams. The success rate on Advanced Placement exams at his school rose by 800%.

Learning Communities at the Crossroads: Toward the Best Schools We've Ever Had by Mike Schmoker

AND SEE: Confessions of an Instructional Leader

"bad teacher" - bad parent?

I AM a special education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances. I love these kids, but they can be a handful. Almost without exception, they struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. What’s more, these are high school students, so their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure.

As you might imagine, my job can be extremely difficult. Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically even over just the past 18 months. While my class sizes have grown, support staff members have been laid off. Students with increasingly severe disabilities are being pushed into more mainstream classrooms like mine, where they receive less individual attention and struggle to adapt to a curriculum driven by state-designed high-stakes tests.

On top of all that, I’m a bad teacher. That’s not my opinion; it’s how I’m labeled by the city’s Education Department. Last June, my principal at the time rated my teaching “unsatisfactory,” checking off a few boxes on an evaluation sheet that placed my career in limbo. That same year, my school received an “A” rating. I was a bad teacher at a good school. It was pretty humiliating.

[snip]

When the assistant principal walked in, one of these students, a freshman girl classified with an emotional disturbance, began cursing. When the assistant principal ignored her, she started cursing at me. Then she began lobbing pencils across the room. Was this because I was a bad teacher? I don’t know.

I know that after she began throwing things, I sent her to the dean’s office. I know that a few days later, I received notice that my lesson had been rated unsatisfactory because, among other things, I had sent this student to the dean instead of following our school’s “guided discipline” procedure.

I was confused. Earlier last year, this same assistant principal observed me and instructed me to prioritize improving my “assertive voice” in the classroom. But about a month later, my principal observed me and told me to focus entirely on lesson planning, since she had no concerns about my classroom management. A few weeks earlier, she had written on my behalf for a citywide award for “classroom excellence.” Was I really a bad teacher?

In my three years with the city schools, I’ve seen a teacher with 10 years of experience become convinced, after just a few observations, that he was a terrible teacher. A few months later, he quit teaching altogether. I collaborated with another teacher who sought psychiatric care for insomnia after a particularly intense round of observations. I myself transferred to a new school after being rated “unsatisfactory.”

Behind all of this is the reality that teachers care a great deal about our work. At the school where I work today, my “bad” teaching has mostly been very successful. Even so, I leave work most days replaying lessons in my mind, wishing I’d done something differently. This isn’t because my lessons are bad, but because I want to get better at my job.

In fact, I don’t just want to get better; like most teachers I know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have to be. Dozens and dozens of teenagers scrutinize my language, clothing and posture all day long, all week long. If I’m off my game, the students tell me. They comment on my taste in neckties, my facial hair, the quality of my lessons. All of us teachers are evaluated all day long, already. It’s one of the most exhausting aspects of our job.

Teaching was a high-pressure job long before No Child Left Behind and the current debates about teacher evaluation. These debates seem to rest on the assumption that, left to our own devices, we teachers would be happy to coast through the school year, let our skills atrophy and collect our pensions.

The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies. Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning. Good administrators use the evaluation processes to support teachers and help them avoid those painful classroom moments — not to weed out the teachers who don’t produce good test scores or adhere to their pedagogical beliefs.

Worst of all, the more intense the pressure gets, the worse we teach. When I had administrators breathing down my neck, the students became a secondary concern. I simply did whatever my assistant principal asked me to do, even when I thought his ideas were crazy. In all honesty, my teaching probably became close to incoherent. One week, my assistant principal wanted me to focus on arranging the students’ desks to fit with class activities, so I moved the desks around every day, just to show that I was a good soldier. I was scared of losing my job, and my students suffered for it.
Confessions of a Bad Teacher
By WILLIAM JOHNSON
Published: March 3, 2012

As far as I can tell, there are two approaches to accountability: roughly, top-down and bottom-up.

Top down means state tests, substantially reduced teacher autonomy, and lots and lots of principal observations.

Bottom up means professional learning communities.

At least, that's the way it looks to me.

I gather from some of palisadesk's comments that top-down can work. At the same time, I've spent the past 6 years of my life trying to function as a parent inside a tiny district headed by a top-down superintendent, and those were six long years. I never want to hear the words "work up the chain of command" again ever. Or "Thank you for your ongoing cooperation and support." I don't like being thanked for my ongoing cooperation and support. I feel that if there must be ongoing cooperation and support, I would like to be the person receiving the said cooperation and support at least occasionally.

Anyway, blood over the dam, but my point is: I don't think top-down makes for happy teachers, and I know for a fact that top-down in my district produced a very large cohort of unhappy parents.

I'm reading that in Finland teachers function as professionals, and it looks like maybe that's going to happen in my district.

I vote for teachers as professionals.

And I vote for Richard DuFour's "professional learning communities" as the best way to get there.

what is a professional learning community

I would like my school board to hire a superintendent who has headed a district with Professional Learning Communities.

teach, test, and hope for the best

Richard DuFour:

”Typically, teachers teach, test, and hope for the best. [Adlai] Stevenson [High School] teachers established standards of mastery for...common assessments and for each subtest within a common assessment. They set a bar for student performance and then worked to ensure that each student could make it over that bar.”
The Learning-Centered Principal
Richard DuFourMay 2002 | Volume 59 | Number 8 
Beyond Instructional Leadership   Pages 12-15

professional learning communities

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.

my 2 cents

on Response to Intervention

the unwritten rule

from Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker:

Education has developed its own ... tradition of unwritten rules or norms that impact the day-to-day workings of schools across the United States. Like baseball, these norms are not only unwritten, they are largely unexamined. They simply represent "the way we do things here." Someone entering the profession as a new teacher in a traditional school will soon discover the unwritten rules, the way things are to be done. If those rules or norms were written, here is what they might say:

[snip]

Our job is to teach, and the students' job is to learn. [italics mine]

Hence: tutors.


lgm on upstate NY
it's good to be rich
all things PLC

'an okay teacher with a big mouth'

I feel I know this teacher: I've always loved the teachers with the big mouths! I like quiet teachers, too.... it's just that I have a soft spot in my heart for the brassy ones.

(I have a soft spot in my heart for brassy people in general, come to think of it.)

I'm trying to remember whether palisadesk has given us studies on teacher effectiveness having to do with the teacher as a strong personality -- ? Can't remember. If she's around, I hope she'll weigh in.

In any event, this teacher sounds like a lot of fun.

She was inspired to write a manifesto on taking the bull by the horns after attending a two-day conference on professional learning communities:

From: Ballantine, Sara
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 10:49 PM
To: All Teachers and Staff
Subject: The Problem With Education in America: An Autobiography

Dear Esteemed Colleagues,

I would like to take this opportunity to say, well, to say that we suck. Don’t believe me? Ask Rob, he’ll show you the numbers. Now please take a minute to compose yourselves, grab a tissue, call your mom/spouse/brother/sister/accountant/etc. to wallow in self pity.

Done? Let’s move on.

The question still remains, who is to blame?

No, scratch that. That isn’t the question. The question remains, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

I do need to preface this by saying that I have no misgivings about my talent, as well as my shortcomings. I believe it would be safe to say that we, in fact, all have talent, as well as shortcomings. So again, just to be clear, I write this not to determine who is the “suckiest” out of all of us, but rather, as a call to action.

We are all aware that our first semester numbers were pretty dismal to say the least...I don’t feel the need to outline all of the barriers in our way; we are all well aware of the current state of things in our country, our district, and our school.

Thus, I propose that we stop focusing on the things we can’t change, and concentrate on the things we can.

Let’s stop blaming the social demographics of our students, the apathy of parents, the lack of motivation in our students, the skills that they “didn’t come in with,” the middle school teachers, the elementary teachers, the birth control that the parents of our students didn’t take, the fact that we didn’t have any coffee this morning, the union, admin, each other, and start taking responsibility for the job that we were hired to do.

Let’s change our focus from the curriculum that is not available, the money that isn’t there, the challenges imposed by the “block” schedule, and start looking to each other as our greatest resources.

[snip]

The issue is critical, more so than some of us care to admit, and the time to take action is now. Actually, it was yesterday, and even before that, so it must be NOW.

I understand that I am saying things that many of us don’t want to hear, presenting issues that we would rather not confront, and making suggestions that we fear we will not be able to fulfill. I understand that this letter will make me unpopular among some of you, and expect some criticism. And to be frank, I really don’t care. I say that with conviction because this isn’t about me, it’s not about you, it’s about the 900 lives that we are charged with five days a week, 180 days a year, and the job we elected to do.

Some of us will be convening in the staff lounge (in the cafeteria) tomorrow at lunch to begin this dialogue and create and action plan; however, I hope to see ALL of us there. Let’s face it; we don’t have until next week, next month or next year.

So, Esteemed Colleagues, I propose that we do everything we can to make us not just “Better than Good,” but that we do whatever it takes to be more gooder.

No, scratch that. Let’s be great.

Sincerely,

Sara Ballantine

I'm sorry, but I have to say it: DUMP THE BLOCK SCHEDULING. I mean, c'mon. You've got a teacher with a big mouth who's willing to lead the charge, rally the troops, swear off complaining (and gossiping!) in the teacher's lounge -- and you're saddling her with block scheduling?

How about no?

Since I'm not a teacher, I want to add that I haven't put up this post because I think Ms. Ballantine and her colleagues "suck."

I've put it up because I think Ms. Ballantine's approach to herself, her job, and her abilities is pretty close to exemplary -- at least, it is for a certain personality type. Probably the brassy personality type. As she says, she's not concerned about her talent or her shortcomings; she knows she has talent and she knows she has shortcomings. Talent and shortcomings are neither here nor there. What matters is the kids, and that's what she's saying.

"I suck and my data isn't great" can be a highly productive attitude, and I'm in a position to know. That's all.

The Comments are nice, too.

interview

Richard DuFour on questions to ask job candidates:

1. I’m going to present you with four statements. Which is closest to your personal philosophy? “I believe all students can learn…

- based on their ability.”

- if they take advantage of the opportunities we give them to learn.”

- something, but it is more important that we create a warm and caring environment than fixating on academic achievement.”

- and we should be committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure all students learn at high levels.”

is there a way out of this box?

eduprobe wrote:

I live in an affluent, high-standardized-test-scoring school district. Some of the observations made here (e.g. pervasive use of private tutoring, learning problems often pushed onto parents) absolutely describe our district. Opposition is likely to be fierce from all sides to any change that might threaten the all-important (for neighborhood reputation and property values) test scores.

As a parent, how can I tell whether the schools are good or the teachers are good? The only measures we have available to us are the standardized test scores, which are high. If we don't have the means to measure the contribution of the school & the teachers to our kids' learning, then it seems unlikely that any significant changes would be introduced in the schools. We'll continue to address concerns about learning by going outside the school system, i.e. more tutoring, more "enrichment", more online supplementation, etc.

Is there a way out of this box?

anonymous wrote:

I'd love to see real data on parent supplementation/outside tutoring, with the reason(s)documented, available on the internet for every school in the country. I know it's a pipe dream, but it would be really useful and easy to do with a well-designed questionaire. It sure would raise a red flag about school quality if a highly-rated (test scores) school had 40% of students receiving regular instruction from parents or other tutoring sources.

I know many parents in affluent, highly-rated districts who have been saying for decades that the schools are riding on the student demographics/parent efforts.

I think there is a way out, and that way is the path taken by Richard DuFour at Adlai Stevenson High School 25 years ago, when he developed professional learning communities.

I've also come to think that the core feature that makes professional learning communities work, the one characteristic without which you have no chance of success, is a school-wide commitment to the individual student.

I realize that you have an entire school system to worry about and that I am focused only on one child. However, after many years of experience with education, I have become convinced that a large percentage of children with real potential are brushed aside and discouraged by education systems that concentrate on the system rather than the needs of each child. The converse is also true. Where the needs of each child are understood and accommodated, schools succeed. I have experienced it personally.

a grandfather takes a stand