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October 31, 2007

Improvement for ALL

We often hear from teachers outside of the regular education classrooms how difficult it can be to adjust Continuous Improvement concepts for their non-traditional situations. I asked for feedback about that issue from some of our special education teachers and received the following response.

 

 

Andrea is a teacher in our program that addresses the needs of children with severe mental and physical disabilities. Skeptical at first, Andrea has found a way to incorporate Continuous Improvement concepts into her classroom that she has found to be both fun and meaningful.

 

 

“Progress is sometimes hard to see with my students  - or comes very slowly, but it was really rewarding each month to see on the graphs that they really WERE improving as a class.

 

If you are training special ed teachers (especially those with lower functioning kids) and they are having a hard time with class goals, you can suggest what I did. Since they all have goals on their IEP's anyway, I looked at which ones were common and picked those areas for class goals. For example, all of my kids have some kind of communication goal and an independence goal. Since the IEP's are data driven anyway, there is no "extra" data to collect for 'Continuous Improvement'. The only extra step is coming up with a class total. My kids enjoyed coloring in the bar each month and clapping and cheering when the bars went up. I'm not sure they really understood the meaning, but I was able to work in fine motor skills and communication into a 'Continuous Improvement' activity.”

 

 

Thanks, Andrea!!!

 

 

Paul

Posted by Paul Hayes at 10:50 AM | | Comments (0)

October 17, 2007

Professional Learning Community or Academic Team? What’s the Difference?

I work in a middle school that is divided into 8 academic teams, two for each grade level (6, 7, 8). Each team meets bi-weekly to discuss issues that have arisen with their students and team processes. We call these meetings “Kid Day” meetings to keep the focus on the students. With the term “Professional Learning Community” being thrown around in the district, it was suggested by a colleague that we change the name of these meetings to PLC meetings to align with the district vision, mission, values and goals. After doing some research, I chose this forum to provide my input on that suggestion.

Simply changing what we call the groups with whom we meet is one thing – actually implementing the concepts of a professional learning community is quite another. Richard DuFour (2004), challenges true PLC’s to respond affirmatively to the following questions:

  1. Are we clear on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions each student is to acquire as a result of this course, grade level, and unit we are about to teach?
  2. Have we agreed on the criteria we will use in assessing the quality of student work, and can we apply the criteria consistently?
  3. Have we developed common formative assessments to monitor each student's learning on a timely basis?
  4. Do we use the formative assessments to identify students who are having difficulty in their learning so that we can provide those students with timely, systematic interventions that guarantee them additional time and support for learning until they have become proficient?
  5. Do we use data to assess our individual and collective effectiveness? Do assessment results help us learn from one another in ways that positively affect our classroom practice?
  6. Does our team work interdependently to achieve SMART goals that are Strategic (linked to school goals), Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented (focused on evidence of student learning rather than teacher strategies), and Time-bound?
  7. Are continuous improvement processes built into our routine work practice?
  8. Do we make decisions by building shared knowledge regarding best practices rather than simply pooling opinions?
  9. Do we demonstrate, through our collective efforts, our determination to help all students learn at high levels?
  10. Do we use our collaborative team time to focus on these critical issues?

According to DuFour, “a group of people does not become a PLC by enrolling in a program, renaming existing practices, taking the PLC pledge, or learning the secret PLC handshake. A team becomes a professional learning community only when the educators within it align their practices with PLC concepts.”

So, can we change what we call our meetings? Sure. Can we truly call those groups PLC’s? Not yet!

Read more at:

http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/MiddleSchoolJournal/Articles/September2007/Article1/tabid/1496/Default.aspx

Paul & Becky

Posted by Paul Hayes at 02:24 PM | | Comments (1)

October 10, 2007

Teacher Quality and Professional Learning Communities

In this blog entry, we thought we would respond to Bob Herbert’s opinion-editorial titled “Our School’s Must Do Better” published in the New York Times on October 2, 2007.  Herbert suggests two areas for consideration:  teacher quality and alternative school models. Our response... 

School reform!  Two simple words – many complex issues fueled by the rate at which the world, technology, communication and the workplace is changing. The question becomes what are the priority targets for education reform.  Bob Herbert’s column, “Our School’s Must Do Better” suggests two areas:  teacher quality and alternative school models.

What is happening in the area of teacher quality?  One answer:  Professional Learning Communities.  Increasingly, the one-size–fits-all teacher in-service training is being replaced by Professional Learning Community strategies as developed by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour and Robert Eaker.  Professional Learning Communities (PLC) is built on three principles: 
a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and thirdly, action and results with a commitment to continuous improvement.   The impetus of improvement for teachers and students results from collective inquiry focused on four critical questions:

  • What is it we want our student to learn?
  • How will we know if students have learned it?
  • What will we do if students have not learned?
  • How will we deepen the learning for students who have already mastered the essential knowledge? 

Critical to the PLC culture is the commitment to continuous improvement, “Inherent to a PLC are a persistent disquiet with the status quo and a constant search for a better way to achieve goals…”Rick DuFour.

Perhaps as Professional Learning Communities continue to bring about significant change in student achievement and teacher quality they walk hand-in hand with alternate school models.  We like this quote regarding the PLC path to
quality in education by Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.

           “Rick DuFour and his colleagues push us to new levels of understanding of
            how professional learning communities work.  They then invite us to join
            them in developing unique frameworks that can be used in our own
            schools to create cultures of time, feeling, focus, and persistence aimed
            at ensuring that every child will succeed.  Critical to their approach is
            aggregating what we know and using this knowledge together, thus
            compounding its effect."

We welcome your comments or response.

Becky & Paul

Professional Learning Community Resources:
Professional Learning Communites at Work by Richard Dufour and Robert Eaker
Whatever It Takes How Professional Learning Communities Respond When Kids Don't Learn by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker & Gayle Karhanek
Learning by Doing by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker & Thomas Many


Posted by Becky Martin at 10:15 AM | | Comments (3)

October 01, 2007

ASQ's Journal for Quality and Participation

Welcome to guest blogger Deborah Hopen!
ASQ’s quarterly publication The Journal for Quality and Participation focuses on teams and other participatory management approaches, change management, leadership, and other people-oriented topics. We currently are seeking articles that have not been published previously and currently are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. In addition to full-length articles between 2,000 and 2,500 words, each issue also features the department “Educator’s World.” Articles submitted for this column should present case studies or theories and applications related to the use of quality and participation in K-12 or higher education. Articles for this department should be limited to 2,000 words under most circumstances. Please contact the editor Deborah Hopen at debhopen@nventure.com for more detailed author guidelines or a sample issue of JQP.
Thank you  Deborah!

Paul & Becky

Posted by Becky Martin at 02:53 PM | | Comments (1)