On Common Ground: The Power of Professional Learning Communities

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On Common Ground The Power of Professional
Learning Communities

• Richard DuFour
• Robert Eaker
• Rebecca DuFour
• Editors

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What This Means for Northwest ISD Educators and
Students

• Embrace learning rather than teaching as your
  school mission.
• Work collaboratively to help all students learn.
• Use formative assessments and a focus on results
  to foster continuous improvement.
• Assume individual responsibility to take steps to
  create such schools.

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Research agrees with the following

• The right kind of continuous, structured teacher
  collaboration improves the quality of teaching
  and pays big, often immediate, dividends in
  student learning and professional morale in
  virtually any setting.
• Mike Schmoker
• Here and Now Improving Teaching and Learning
• Foreword to On Common Ground

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Professional Learning Communities...
Embrace a group of teachers who meet regularly to
share, refine, and assess the impact of lessons
and strategies continuously to help increasing
numbers of students learn at higher levels.
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Challenges to Assumptions and Clashing Purposes

• Challenge One Developing and Applying Shared
  Knowledge
• Challenge Two Sustaining the Hard Work of Change
• Challenge Three Transforming School Culture
• Clashing Purposes Learning for All Versus
  Teaching for All

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Questions Educators Need to Clarify through
Collaboration

• What is it we want all students to learn?
• How will we know when each student has mastered
  the essential learning?
• How will we respond when a student experiences
  initial difficulty in learning?
• How will we deepen the learning for students who
  have already mastered essential knowledge and
  skills?

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Professional Learning Communities Require...

• Collaborative Cultures Versus Teacher Isolation
• Collective Capacity Versus Individual Development
• A Focus on Results Versus a Focus on Activities

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Professional Learning Communities Require...

• Assessment for Learning Versus Assessment of
  Learning
• Widespread Leadership Versus the Charismatic
  Leader
• Self-Efficacy Versus Dependency

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Big Ideas of a Professional Learning Community

• 1 Ensuring that Students Learn
• What do we want each student to learn?
• How will we know when each student has learned
  it?
• How will we respond when a student experiences
  difficulty?

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Big Ideas of a Professional Learning Community

• The third question separates learning communities
  from traditional schools.
• Intervention must be
• Timely,
• Based on intervention rather than remediation,
• Directive - requiring students to devote extra
  time and receive additional assistance.

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Big Ideas of a Professional Learning Community

• 2 A Culture of Collaboration
• Collaborating for School Improvement
• Removing Barriers to Success
• 3 A focus on Results
• Cure The DRIP syndrome Data Rich/Information
  Poor
• Hard Work and Commitment is the Key!

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Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Translate standards into rational, relevant,
focused expectations.
Accountability systems must include explicit
indicators of adult behavior in addition to test
scores.
Frequent Common Assessments
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Establishment of Power Standards

• Endurance
• Importance lasts beyond the state tests
• Recurring nature of key skills and knowledge
• Leverage
• Success in one standard is likely to be
  associated with success in another standard.
• Essential for the next level of instruction

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Assessment For Learning The Key to Continuous
Improvement

• Consistency in Assessment
• Timeliness The Nintendo Effect
• Differentiation - Students must be able to show
  what they know in a variety of different ways.

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Accountability The Leadership and Learning
Connection

• Tier 1 Typical accountability data including
  test scores and other data required for external
  accountability
• Tier 2 Measurable indicators that reflect
  professional practices
• Tier 3 School Narrative allowing teachers and
  school leaders to provide a qualitative context
  for quantitative data
• Douglas Reeves
• Putting It All Together
• On Common Ground

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Assessment FOR Learning Building a Culture of
Confident Learners

• Share clear, appropriate learning targets with
  students from the beginning of learning.
• Increase accuracy of classroom assessments on
  those targets.
• Make sure students have continuous access to
  descriptive feedback.
• Involve students continuously in classroom
  assessment, record keeping, and communication
  processes.

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Assessment as a Motivational Trigger

• Intended to trigger motivation among school
  leaders, teachers, and students
• Dire consequences attached to low scores
• The emotions triggered by assessments now reveal
  themselves to be counterproductive.

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A New Mission and Its Emotional Promise

• Minimum level of competence for all students
• Students mission is to become competent
• Teachers must believe all can become competent.
• Driving emotional forces must be confidence and
  optimism.

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Differentiating Assessment OF Learning and
Assessment FOR Learning
Diagnose Student Needs
District-wide Tests
State Tests
Unit Tests
Promote continued learning
For Practice
OF
FOR
College admissions
Final Exams
Conducted after instruction occurs.
Help students watch themselves improve
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The Necessary Conditions

• Teachers must understand and be prepared to
  satisfy the information needs of student decision
  makers.
• Achievement expectations must be clear and
  appropriate.
• Classroom assessments must be accurate.
• Communication systems must deliver assessment
  results into the hands of their intended users
  (the students) in a timely and understandable
  manner.

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Caution!

• Common assessments OF learning may not
  constitute assessments FOR learning if they do
  not satisfy the conditions of student involvement
  spelled out here.
• Rick Stiggins
• Assessment FOR Learning Building A Culture of
  Confident Learners
• On Common Ground

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Vital Aspects of Professional Learning Communities

• The key beliefs of educators
• Effort based ability
• This is important.
• You can do it.
• I wont give up on you.
• The way those beliefs are manifested in
  individual behavior and school policies

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Keys to Success for Disadvantaged Children

• Interactive teaching behaviors
• Classroom structures and procedures
• Classroom climate and personal relationship
  building
• Explicit teaching of effective effort to all
  students
• School-wide structures for building a culture of
  aspiration, effective effort, and responsibility
• A focus on the future

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Putting Effort-Based Ability to Work

• Students come to know that effective effort is
  the main determinant of achievement not innate
  ability.
• Patterns of calling on students
• Responses to student answers
• Giving help
• Dealing with errors
• Giving tasks and assignments
• Offering feedback on student performances
• Displaying tenacity

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Classroom Structures and Procedures

• Grading Not Yet system
• Re-teaching Loops daily
• Redos and retakes (take highest grade)
• Grouping dynamic and based on skill needs
• Rewards

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Classroom Climate and Personal Relationship
Building

• Community
• Ownership
• Risk-taking

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Explicit Teaching of Effective Effort to All
Students Six Attributes
Time
Focus
Commitment
Six Attributes
Resourcefulness
Use of Feedback
Strategies
Must be explicitly taught to students!
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School-Wide Structures for Building a Student
Culture of Aspiration, Effective Effort, and
Responsibility

• Motivational Boot Camp (MS and HS)
• Creates role models
• Concept of individual goal setting
• Builds strong sense of community

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Classroom Climate and Personal Relationship
Building

• Community
• Ownership
• Risk-taking

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Creating a Climate of High Achievement for All
Students

• Community and Mutual Support
• Knowing others
• Greeting, acknowledging, listening, responding
  and affirming
• Group identity, responsibility, and
  interdependence
• Cooperative learning, social skills, class
  meetings, group dynamics
• Problem solving and conflict resolution

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Creating a Climate of High Achievement for All
Students

• Confidence and Risk Taking
• Mistakes are a sign of weakness vs. Mistakes
  help one learn
• Speed counts (Faster Smarter) vs. Care,
  Perseverance, and craftsmanship count.
• Good students do it by themselves vs. Good
  students need help and a lot of feedback.
• Inborn intelligence is the main determinant of
  success vs. Effort and effective strategies are
  the main determinants of success.
• Only the bright few can achieve at a high level
  vs. Everyone is capable of high achievement.

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Creating a Climate of High Achievement for All
Students

• Influence and Control
• Students are empowered to influence the pace of
  the class.
• Students negotiate the rules of the classroom
  game.
• Students are taught to use the principles of
  learning and other learning strategies.
• Students use knowledge of learning styles and
  make choices.
• Students and their communities are sources of
  knowledge.

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Building and Strengthening the Belief in
Effort-Based Ability

• Say it
• Model it
• Organize for it
• Protect it
• Reward it

Jonathon Saphier Masters of Motivation On Common
Ground
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Learning and Punishment

• Education has used an arsenal of punitive
  measures.
• The cost of short-term success is long-term
  failure.
• The most important attitude that can be formed
  is that of the desire to go on learning. John
  Dewey

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Lifelong Learning

• Adults and young people alike should acquire
  insatiable appetites for learning.
• Model lifelong learning and make it visible.
• Enlist parent participation in telling their
  children what they learned at work that day.
• Lifelong learning must be a common goal and a
  major part of the curriculum.

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Lifelong Learning

• Examine what students do on their own time.
• Construct ways of detecting, monitoring, and
  measuring lifelong learning in students.
• Examine what is happening in school that turns
  students off and determine how to turn them back
  on.

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Lifelong Learning

• Honor, embrace, and include the many ways that a
  person comes to know something they care
  passionately about.
• Reduce didactic instruction.
• Emphasize learning by doing.
• Promote pleasure and success.

Roland S. Barth Turning Book Burners Into
Lifelong Learners On Common Ground
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The Case for Learning Communities

• Isolation allows teachers to become lax and
  indifferent.
• Teachers in isolation have come to believe
  student outcomes are inevitable.
• Teachers have not been given the opportunity to
  enjoy the positive effects of collective thought
  and effort,

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From Isolation to Collaboration

• Disciplined, professional collaboration and
  ongoing assessment.
• Teachers learn best from other teachers, where
  they literally teach each other the art of
  teaching.
• Concrete and precise talk about teaching practice
  need to distinguish one practice and its virtue
  from another.

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From Isolation to Collaboration

• Collaboration must be focused on achievement.
• Accomplishments of individuals must be recognized
  and celebrated.
• Satisfaction of seeing their collective work pay
  off concretely and frequently

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Redefining Leadership The Self-Managing Team

• Combine autonomy and responsibility for results.
• Provide abundant opportunities for individuals
  to share their collective and complementary
  skills and abilities toward better results.
• We know what to do. Now, we must do it.

Mike Schmoker No Turning Back The Ironclad Case
for Professional Learning Communities
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Knowledge Arts

• Creating Knowledge
• Communicating Knowledge
• Organizing Knowledge
• Acting on Knowledge

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Leaders Matter

• Quality of PLCs depend on quality of leadership
  by principals and teachers
• Leaders must shape conversations persistently
  offering values, intentions, and beliefs
• Promote learning, collaboration, and environments
  where all members feel cared for and respected.

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The Final Two Percent

• All reform strategies are a prelude to the
  activities that produce professional learning,
  collaborative relationships, and improved
  practice.
• The final 2 is a cluster of experiences that
  literally change the brains of teachers and
  administrators.

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The Final Two Percent

• Build a repertoire of generic skills.
• Seek and value students points of view.
• Visual mapping approaches
• Meet with groups of teachers on a regular basis
  for study and discussion, and report at faculty
  meetings.
• Action research, walk-throughs, case discussions,
  journaling, peer coaching, etc.

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Fundamental Barriers to Professional Learning
Communities

• A lack of clarity regarding values, intentions
  and beliefs
• Dependence on those outside of the school for
  solutions to problems
• A sense of resignation that robs educators of the
  energy that is essential to the continuous
  improvement of teaching, learning, and
  relationships

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A Teachable Point of View

• Everyone is both a teacher and a student.
• Virtuous Teaching Cycles learning flows in
  various directions throughout the organization
• Teachable Points of View (TPOVs) a cohesive
  set of ideas and concepts that a person is able
  to articulate clearly to others

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Creating Teachable Points of View

• Requires a total commitment of head, heart, and
  guts
• Ongoing, iterative and interactive process

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Using Stories and Dialogue to Convey TPOVs

• Interactive Teaching learn from the students as
  well as teaching them
• Dialogue different from discussion, debate, and
  argument
• Suspension of judgment
• Release the need for specific outcome
• Examine underlying assumptions
• Authenticity
• Slower pace of interaction with silence between
  speakers
• Listening deeply to self and others for
  collective meaning

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Recommendations

• Translate learning into action.
• Address lack of clarity, resignation, and
  dependency
• Use interactive teaching particularly dialogue
• Focus efforts on activities that represent the
  final two percent of professional learning.

Dennis Sparks Leading for Transformation On
Common Ground
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The Seven Correlates of Effective Schools

• Instructional Leadership
• Clear and Focused Mission
• Safe and Orderly Environment
• Climate of High Expectations for Success
• Frequent Monitoring of Student Progress
• Positive Home-School Relations
• Opportunity to Learn and Time on Task

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Three Forms of Power

• Stick Power Threat
• Carrot Power Incentive
• Hug Power Shared vision, values and beliefs

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Core Leadership Group

• Initiate and sustain an ongoing discourse on
  school improvement.
• Constantly scan the external education
  environment.
• Constantly examine the internal environment.
• Monitor the change efforts.
• Oversee the celebration of successful change
  efforts.

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Core Beliefs

• School improvement must be school-by-school and
  one school at a time.
• Only two kinds of schools improving schools and
  declining schools
• Every adult in a school is important.
• Capacity to improve already resides in the school
• You are already doing the best you can do given
  what you know and the current conditions.
• All children can learn.

Lawrence Lezotte More Effective Schools PLCs in
Action On Common Ground
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Capacity Building Characteristics

• Leaders have coherent driving conceptualization
• Collective moral purpose
• Structure and roles most effective for capacity
  building
• Leadership capacity building for those in key
  roles

• Lateral capacity building
• Deep learning
• Productive conflict
• Demanding cultures
• External partners
• Growing financial investment

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State-Level Development Implications

• Need to address the problem of bias toward
  individualistic solutions
• Radical need for systems thinkers in action
• Importance of learning from each other as we go
• Danger of waiting for others to act

Michael Fullan Professional Learning Communities
Writ Large On Common Ground
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Engaging the State, District, and Campus for
System-Wide Success

• Constantly seek and refine better ideas and
  practices (knowledge dimension)
• Foster greater cohesion and shared commitment
  toward a higher purpose (moral imperative)

Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap DuFour, Eaker, and
DuFour On Common Ground