MSTA Grant PLC Leader’s Training Session 1

1. MSTA Grant PLC Leader’s TrainingSession 1 Julie Frame-Hansen Linda Harvieux

2. Fortune Cookie Warm-Up • How does your fortune relate to your experience working in a team? • Professional learning community • Grade-level or content-area team • Leadership team

3. Agenda • Introductions and structure • MSTA • “Evolution of the Professional Learning Community” • Technical vs Cultural Change • First and Second Order Change • The Role of the PLC Leader and The Four PLC Questions • Structure of the PLC • Agendas • Learning Logs • Weekly plan

4. Scheduling • How will your team schedule your 4 – 1 hour meetings? • Ideas, suggestions, support from leadership

5. Professional Learning Communities • PLC’s operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators. DuFour, et. al, 2006

6. What’s Different About a PLC? • Read, “Evolution of the Professional Learning Community.” • In small groups list differences between a PLC and a “traditional team meeting”. • List on chart tablets

7. Six Characteristics • Shared Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals • Collective Inquiry • Collaborative Culture • Action Orientation and Experimentation • Continuous Improvement • Focus on Results

8. The Four Questions • What is it we expect the students to learn? • How will we know when they have learned it? • How will we respond when they don’t learn? • How will we respond when they already know it?

9. Technical Change (First Order) • Developing Team • Full participation • Rotating jobs • Collecting and sharing data

10. Cultural Change (Second Order) • The Believers • The Tweeners • The Survivors • The Fundamentalists

11. One who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively. A helper and enabler whose goal is to support others as they achieve exceptional performance. Group Process Facilitation A way of providing leadership without taking the reins. A facilitator’s job is to get others to assume responsibility, to take the lead, and engage in meaningful collaboration. -Facilitation At A Glance Group Process Facilitator

12. Group Process Facilitators: • Do not have all the answers, are not content experts • Stay neutral, if you must move out of facilitator role and into role as participating member of group identify that move. • Are responsible for room set up that supports effective teams • Listen; demonstrate that you are by using verbal and non verbal cues. • Paraphrase or clarify for the benefit of all members of the group. • Watch the time (or appoint a timekeeper) • Play “ping pong” redirect questions by sending to others rather than answering yourself • Use humor – appropriate humor! • Call and identify sidetracks • Encourage all group members to acknowledge dysfunctional behaviors as they occur! • Park it sheets – record all sidetrack items • Use the imaginary spell check button – spell creatively Facilitators At A Glance

13. Moving teams toward success The teaming goes round and round! Forming Performing Storming Norming

14. A team is people doing something together. • The something that a team does isn’t what makes it a team. . . the together part is.

15. Processes for Groups Everyone participate: Round Robin, Go Round Set the stage Focus Attention: How do you feel about being here today? Check in: Something positive that happened in your professional life since the last meeting? Check the group to see where it’s at: Round Robin, Go Round Check for agreement: Thumbs Up, Fist to Five Get unstuck: Look for commonalities, agreement Identify polar points – What would it take for this to work for you? Take a break – get up and stretch Move on and come back to issue Check to see if it can hold until the next meeting. Perhaps the group needs more information.

16. Mediation/Conflict Resolution • Issue/Problem • Alternatives • Decide • Act

17. What the first meeting might look like: Clarify purpose of meeting Clarify your role Clarify roles of others Are there specific tasks that need to be covered, i.e. recorder? Check-in, warm up Walk through meeting process As a group identify norms and procedures or ground rules Discussion of the four critical questions or best practice, what works! Round up items not discussed including parking lot ideas Expected activities prior to next meeting (future agendas) Allow members to express how they felt about the session (on a scale of 1 – 5, how do you feel the meeting went and why or at the beginning of meeting ask group members to “pick a norm to work on today”. At end of meeting ask them to identify the norm and rate how they did.

18. Developing Norms • What are norms and why are they important? • Who should set the norms? • How should we enforce our norms?

19. Norms • Non-Negotiables • Define essential learnings and use common assessments • Everyone participates and works toward the common goal – achievement for all students • Teams make individual norms and honor their team norms -adapted from DuFour, et. al.

20. Agenda Week 1, PLC development Date: Time: Team norms: Materials needed: Copies of Professional Learning Communities Sessions weekly plan, copies of baseline assessment and rubric. Calendar, equal sign article, msta notebook Tasks and topics to be covered: Check in, Share goal of MSTA, Norms, Structure of the meeting, times for meetings, assign roles, future tasks For next meeting: give baseline assessments, tally data and bring to the meeting, read the equal sign article

21. What is it we expect the students to learn? Math Success: It’s In Our Hands

22. Agenda Week 1, part 2 Date: Time: Team norms: Materials needed: baseline data, article, Tasks and topics to be covered: Share results of the baseline assessment, compare student strategies, discuss strategies for teaching the equal sign including informal assessment strategies for gathering student to student data Report baseline data (plc leader) For next meeting: Teach equal sign and gather samples of student work (informal assessment)

23. What is it we expect the students to learn? How will we know when they have learned it? Math Success: It’s In Our Hands

24. Agenda Week 2 Date: Time: Team norms: Materials needed: sample student work, observations, msta notebook/binder, copy of interview Tasks and topics to be covered: Reflect on strategies – how they worked, share results of informal assessments, give examples of students thinking, Discuss the interview, steps, the rubric, questioning strategies For next meeting: conduct interview and collect data, continue to teach strategies

25. Agenda Week 3 Date: Time: Team norms: Materials needed: Student interview data, interview results, msta binder Tasks and topics to be covered: Discuss interview results, effectiveness of questioning strategies, continue to teach strategies For next meeting: Give summative assessment and collate results

26. What is it we expect the students to learn? How will we know when they have learned it? Math Success: It’s In Our Hands How will we respond when they don't learn?

27. Agenda Week 4 Date: Time: Team norms: Materials needed: Summative assessment data and rubric, msta binder, Tasks and topics to be covered: Share results, intervention strategies, discuss misconceptions and successes, who was successful and why, how will results influence future teaching For next meeting: Bring all assessments to next math training PLC report all summative assessment data Complete next baseline assessment for pattern generalization and bring collated data to next PLC

28. What is it we expect the students to learn? How will we know when they have learned it? Math Success: It’s In Our Hands How will we respond when they don't learn? How will we respond when they already know it?

29. Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it’s the only thing. Albert Schweitzer

30. Contact Information • Julie Frame-Hansen • julie.frame-hansen@metroecsu.org • 612-638-1508 • Linda Harvieux • linda.harvieux@metroecsu.org • 612-638-1548