Getting Ready

1. Getting Ready Andrew Taylor Christine Lowden Make a name tent You are unique in your approach to your learning. Print or write your first name and last name – uniquely. Let your name card say something about YOU as a leader of learning.

2. BECOMING A LEARNING SCHOOL Dr. Christine Lowden Dr. Andrew Taylor

3. I am concerned that too few teachers experience the quality of professional development and teamwork that would enable them to be more effective each day. We must make sure that what we know is essential to good teaching is embedded in the life of all teachers. Stephanie Hirsh, Executive Director, NSDC

4. GOALS FOR THE WORK • Identify core elements of a learning school in which all engage in collaborative professional learning to improve student learning. • Develop strategies for transforming your school into a learning school or extend and refine your current work to increase its impact. • Acquire tools to assess your school’s progress toward becoming a learning school. • Clarify roles of the stakeholders in a learning school. • Troubleshoot issues that are perceived as barriers to collaborative professional learning.

5. What Makes You Tick? Materials: Leprechaun, marker • Individually answer the following questions on your gingerbread person as it relates to becoming a learning school. Do not share at this point: • Head: What question(s) do you have that are important for today’s work? • Stomach: What gives you indigestion about building a learning school? • Eyes: What is important for you to see in a learning community? • Ears: What must you listen for in a learning community? • Hands: What expertise do you offer to collaborative learning? • Heart: What is your core belief on the connection between school improvement and professional learning? Share your answers with your table group.

6. Why Agreements/Norms • Set roles and responsibilities • Build trust • Create structures for safety • Ensure we are efficient and effective • Provide opportunities for deep, insightful conversations about teaching and learning • Provide a means for self- assessment of the work of the team

7. Our Agreements • Step up • Make room • Stay present • Collect wisdom • Listen for meaning • Assume goodwill

8. Placemat

9. What is a Learning School? Activity: chart paper, markers Steps for creating a definition: • Form a group at your table with each member of the team choosing a different colored marker and spot on the placemat. Leave the middle of the chart paper empty. • Simultaneously, each teammate answers the following question: What are the elements of a highly functioning learning school? No talking. • Each individual shares their thinking with the group. No interruptions. (POV) • The team listens for similarities and differences and begins to create a common definition of a learning school. Place the common definition in the center. Each team will share their definition with the larger group.

10. Essential Questions to Frame the Day • How do we advocate for and articulate professional learning that positively impacts student learning? • How do we create the conditions and opportunities within our school and teams that advance teaching effectiveness and student achievement? • What are the strategies that learning schools use that bring success?

11. Becoming a Learning School Many teachers engage only in the macro-level professional learning. What is missing for many teachers is the micro, experiential learning that promotes transfer of macro learning into practice. Curry and Killion, Slicing the Layers of Learning, JSD, Winter 2009

12. NSDC Definition Defining Professional Development

13. NSDC Definition:Connections to the Work of Schools Activity 1: NSDC definition and LFNY Wiki Read the definition and choose a passage that you feel has a major implication for the work you do. • Record your thoughts on the right column on the wiki Remember to save when you are done.

14. Reporting on the NSDC Definition Compare the other group wiki pages: What did you discover? What was similar? What was different?

15. A Final Word The new definition of professional development is a moral imperative. The inequity in teaching quality and educational resources across classrooms, schools, and districts denies some students the opportunities for academic success. These inequities can be addressed through effective professional learning within schools. When schools become “learning schools,” every student benefits from every educator’s expertise, and every educator grows professionally with the support of his or her colleagues. Hirsh, JSD , Fall 2009

16. Tool Kit How to effectively use the book and CD

17. Tool Kit Purpose Becoming a Learning School was created to bridge theory and practice in developing a systemic process in schools for continuous improvement through professional learning. It describes key actions needed for implementation of the definition and provides practical tools to ensure that LEARNINGis an essential component of educator collaboration.

18. Becoming a Learning School Supports Teachers Teacher Leaders Coaches Principals and school administrative staff Central Office External Agencies

19. Use the book to • Develop a school-based learning organization focused on professional learning • Implement collaboration at any level on the continuum – • for beginning schools to expand their understanding of collaboration • for more advanced schools to work with targeted protocols for team work • Assess and evaluate collaboration

20. Chapter Contents Self assessment: Where are we now? Brief narrative to describe the key concepts for learning Reflection questions Tool list with suggestions for use Bibliography of additional resources

21. Tool Kit Scavenger Hunt Race Activity 2 In your group, use the Table of Contents and the Tools on the CD list to identify the chapters or tools you might reference in response to the scavenger hunt questions. Stand up when your team is done! 21

22. Continuous Cycle of Improvement

23. Becoming a Learning School Students achieve more when teams of educators within a school and across a district engage in continuous cycles of improvement that focus their attention on their learning needs, as defined by student learning needs, refining their practice and accessing district and external assistance providers to support their efforts. Becoming a Learning School, Killion and Roy, 2009

24. The Continuous Cycle of Improvement The heart of Part A

25. Stages of the continuous cycle of improvement.

26. The Collaborative Learning Team Activity 3: Stults Road Elementary Use the notetaking guide. Observe how the team works together.

27. Data Using information wisely.

28. Beginning the Cycle:The Collaborative Conversation • What is the evidencethat we are confronted with a problem? • What are the apparent causesof the problem over which we have control? (root causes) • What additional data might be needed to test our root cause analysis?

29. Without analyzing and collecting data, schools are unlikely to identify and solve the problems that need attention, identify appropriate interventions to solve those problems, or know how they are progressing toward achievement of their goals. Data are the fuel of school reform. Joellen Killion, JSD, Winter 2000

30. What are the Data? • Demographic – describes the students, school staff, the school, and community • Student learning – shows the results of assessment of and for learning and their impact on student learning • Perception data – collected through surveys, questionnaires, etc. to describe what stakeholders think of the learning environment • School Process – includes the school programs and initiatives, strategies, assessment types, practices Adapted from Victoria Bernhardt

31. Identification of School Data Activity 4 • Consider all the data available in your school. Brainstorm all possibilities. • Categorize the data using Victoria Bernhardt’s data definitions. • Be prepared to share data types to the large group.

32. DataSelf Assessment Senteo Self Assessment

33. Lunch

34. Creating a Culture of Collaboration Video

35. Pull out Negativity by its Roots Those who grow healthy school cultures must root out weeds of bad culture.

36. Pull out Negativity by its Roots Weed 1: We are not responsible for student learning. Weed 2: We prefer to work by ourselves.

37. Pull out Negativity by its Roots Weed 3: We must protect our territory. Weed 4: We focus on activity rather than results.

38. Developing Strategies to Support the Culture Activity 5: Tool 3.10, 3.11,Charts • Scan tools 3.10 and 3.11and prepare to consider strategies that you currently use or want to use to “pull out negativity”. Keep in mind the 12 norms of a school culture. • Create a poster to identify at least two strategies for your weed.

39. IC Maps Evaluating where you are.

40. Innovation Configuration Map • Includes the essential elements of the innovation • Identifies specific behaviors of what an innovation is in practice • Identifies those behaviors on a continuum from ideal to unacceptable • Is both an assessment and planning tool

41. Learning SchoolIC Map Components 1.0 Comprehensive, Sustained, Intensive Professional Development • Effectiveness • Collective Responsibility • Team Configuration • Frequency

42. Learning SchoolIC Map Components 2.0 Continuous Improvement • Data Analysis • Student learning Goals • Educator Learning Goals • Multiple Designs • Interventions for Student Learning • Job-Embedded Support • Ongoing Evaluation

43. Learning SchoolIC Map Components 3.0 Expanded Opportunity for Professional Learning • External Assistance • Learning Outside the School 4.0 Evaluation of Collaborative Professional Learning • Ongoing Evaluation

44. Learning SchoolIC Map Components 5.0 School Support for Collaborative Professional Learning • Principal Support • Teacher Leader Support • Teacher Support • Classroom Implementation

45. Learning SchoolIC Map Components 6.0 District Support for Collaborative Professional Learning • District Leader Support

46. InnovationConfiguration MapContinuum Level 1 Ideal Level 6 Unacceptable

47. Self-Assessment Activity 6: IC Map, dots • Using the IC Map - Where is your school or a school you know on the continuum within each element? (Use the IC to make notes.) • Post your response on the master chart when you finish. • Hold responses as confidential and anonymous. • Make observations with a partner about the results.

48. Connect the Dots • Work with a group to discuss challenges and successes within the element. Alternate between successes and challenges. • Discuss the following: • What strategies can/do you use to strengthen this area? • What challenges must you be aware of? • How would you communicate the need to build capacity for the strategies? • Be prepared to share.

49. TEAMS Creating Effective Teams

50. TEAM: An Essential A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable and who work collaboratively and learn continuously.Lois Brown Easton Learning teams meet almost every day and concern themselves with practical ways to improve teaching and learning. Members of learning communities take collective responsibility for the learning of all students represented by team members. Teacher members of learning teams, which consist of four to eight members, assist one another in examining the standards students are required to master, planning more effective lessons, critiquing student work, and solving the common problems of teaching. Learning Community Standard