Pirates and Cowboys

Something bold, ironic, and beautiful is happening in our schools.  National teacher satisfaction surveys are showing decreasing satisfaction with the career (not the work, mind you, the job).  We could have predicted this just by listening to teachers’ desires and ideas for how to boldly help kids improve, how to build up peers, and what basic features of human learning have been made too complex over the past few years.  Ironically, many school leaders have voiced a concern that they want their staffs to participate in leading change.  Administrators are concerned about how to manage the many different concepts, priorities, and initiatives coming at their staffs.  At the same time, much of the school improvement literature showcases schools that have significantly improved their cultures and student learning were those whose leaders honored and supported staffs of teachers to solve the problems. The beautiful thing is that when you listen carefully, you begin to hear both administrators and staff subtly longing for the same thing.

I listened carefully to some school leaders discuss how a principal operates when teachers take professional ownership for deep personal and student learning and school-wide improvement.  This made me envision the differences in two of my favorite extraordinary groups: pirates and cowboys.

Pirate ships had hierarchies based on specific skills and requisite duties.  They actually operated with an early form of democracy, where the captain was elected based on his personality traits and skills.  He was firmly at the wheel, steering the ship to his desired location.  The captain could be overthrown, but generally the crew followed his determination of when to sail, when to fight, where to pillage, and what to plunder.  While elements of pirate leadership have survived evolution, the model generally hasn’t lasted outside of role-playing fanatics.
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Cowboys, on the other hand, work in teams.  One has ultimate responsibility that the herd arrives from one ranch to another, and he may be paid a little more for that role, but the collective of riders is responsible for keeping the mass of cattle moving forward.  Occasionally, one cowboy will have a problem and a peer will help him back to the herd.  A calf may stray and teams rope it back to safety.  Cowboys are all around the progressing stampede.  When they reach the corral at the end of their journey, you wouldn’t see that head cowboy leading the parade through the gates.  Instead, you probably wouldn’t recognize which hat the leader is under because the team of cowboys is all still surrounding, problem-solving, and busily moving the herd until the last calf reaches their common goal.  Cowboys still successfully exist and most, as I’ve heard, have relatively high career satisfaction.

What type of leadership do you want to create for your students?

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Professional Learning Conception #4 – Data Analysis

One of my main concerns for teaching is the focus of student data that is increasingly being used to evaluate the quality of a teacher.  I agree whole-heartedly that student performance information should inform how a teacher measures progress towards learning targets and should inform the rate and method of instruction he chooses to hit those targets.  The truth is, quality teachers have always been engaged enough in their professional work that they spend most of their lives worrying and planning on how to reach students who need a lift or a challenge.  The problem is, formalizing and standardizing a practice of using data is not a skillset or disposition that all teachers bring to the classroom.  It must be developed, and usually is, with experience.  However, policy and laws are accelerating the need for those skills to be developed through punitive timelines that require we learn how to collect, analyze, and provide data that will not only be used to inform our teaching and learning, but may also preserve a livelihood we love.

Consider this:  Your team, and the local paper, receives a pile of reports from a state test showing that your students aren’t up to par.   Alas, you have been working with your team to determine what academic areas are historically weak in your building, grade, or department.  From those discussions, you’ve identified what other assessment opportunities there are to help you understand what and how the kids in front of you are learning in these areas.  With support from your principal, district peers, or a coach, the team has made it a point to learn new ways to analyze data together, giving you confidence to debunk any surface-level perceptions of your students’ learning.  In fact, this analysis of data points occurs in consistent intervals as part of your “PD” because it informs your problem-solving process for your professional learning and improving instruction for your kids. Invested in this approach to professional learning, you now infrequently hear team members lament on the litany of external variables that keep your students from succeeding. Rather, they discuss how to help kids based on specific measures for the task at hand.


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When a team owns the things they can manage, by measuring it, they are able to explicitly and specifically cite data that supports the quality of instruction and professional learning that supports children.  Learning the skills of data analysis (what to measure, how to measure it, how to evaluate it) is not commonly considered pedagogical, but must become part of that book of knowledge of teaching.  This professional learning takes time to refine and apply to students, cohort after cohort, but is for their own academic good and our own professional security.

How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?

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Cut the Pendulum Strings and Jump Into The River

I’m looking for a new metaphor for educators.  I’m tired of hearing, and using, the overly cliché, “…the pendulum is swinging back again”.  Poet Audre Lorde said, “There are no new ideas.  There are just new ways of making them felt.”  While there is some truth that we oft see familiar things return in new, shiny packaging, I’d like to think that educators aren’t as fickle or uncreative as “the pendulum” implies.

In the late 60’s the trend was to “individualize” instruction, a concept that overwhelmed educators then as it does now when we call it “differentiating” or “personalizing”.  Perhaps the formality of how we do it has changed, but essentially this is a pendulum instance.  Or is it?

Could we give ourselves some credit that at points previously in history we weren’t prepared for some of the reform efforts we tried to pursue?  That’s okay.  If the soil isn’t ready, the seeds won’t root.  I’d like to believe, and I’ve seen in plenty of instances, that we as educators should be some of the best prepared not to repeat our historical mistakes because we’re a reflective bunch.  Can we find the esteem to honor our own professional progress?  Let’s create the gumption and pride to admit that, yes, the old is sometimes new again.  We’ve repackaged solid instructional practices from years of experience and renamed them “interventions”, but we’re applying them in new contexts than before, in environments that have progressed with us and are fundamentally not the same places nor are we the same people who tried them before.

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My hope is that you won’t short change yourselves or those around you by feebly accepting this pendulum theory.  I envision a rope swing over a river.  Sometimes it takes a swing back or forth before we’re lined up right, facing the right way, or just get our mind in the right place to jump.  But there’s a point when we jump off that pendulum swing and into the river, whose flows and swirls blend all things, old ideas and new soil, taking us together, if we allow it, to better understanding.

Maybe that’s my new metaphor, “The river is flowing.”

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Professional Learning Conception#3 – Lit Review

So often I read professional articles or journals that really inspire and speak to me and my classroom needs.  A well-written, divinely-timed article can literally change your practice, just by growing your thinking about instruction, or even philosophy of teaching.  I can’t tell you how many articles come in and out of my inbox because, like me, other teachers who find something wonderful to them, want to make it wonderful for others.  My challenge is reading all of the great thinking and deciding which ones really are my kind of wonderful.

Consider this: You come across research that really moves you.  The author’s work, 15 pages long, drew you in and is now marked up with your highlights and comments about what made it so significant to you. Even a clean copy might be sufficiently long that you know your peers may not share your complete zeal for the subject, simply because they are busy.  You want others on your team to consider this exciting work and how it could improve your students’ success.  To replicate your excitement and professional judgment that this literature is important, you create a one-page (or less) white paper  (or email) summarizing the work.  Maybe it includes these four sections…article title/author, where it’s from, one-paragraph synopsis, connection to your team’s work.  (Having done this myself a handful of times, it takes about 10 minutes to write this because interest is high and your desire to share is higher.)  You send this out to your team and/or peers of interest, so that they can get glimpse of where your personal professional learning is headed.  Those interested might ask, or search, for the article for more details.  Upon your next “PD” time together, you have fodder for substantive conversation.

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How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?

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Childlike

Once I could drive, I started taking my grandmother out for lunch every few weeks.  During one of those visits, we spoke of the difference of childlike and childish, agreeing we both wanted to maintain the former into our adult lives.  In her late 70’s by then, she had maintained a bit of that magic.  I was reminded of that conversation recently when I came across a TED Talk by child prodigy, Adora Svitak.  Adora’s proposal is how thinking as a child often removes A serious allergic reaction to this viagra generika drug is very much useful for the men to improve their testosterone levels and hence, their sex life. The many forms of the medicine- Ajanta Pharma, the side effects from viagra manufacture of Kamagra produces the medicine in three dissimilar forms and taste of tablets, jellies and soft tablets. The valsonindia.com buy viagra medications in these treatments are designed to focus on the influencing reason and some other contributing variables. But how can you ensure you pick levitra generic canada bought that the right product for treating their sexual disorders. the limitations that we adults place on our potential.

This idea came up again with a great teacher-friend, Lisa.  As I was complimenting some student work she had, she reminded me of a comment I had made a few years before, something about how children will always surprise us if we just let them do things their way.  Adora emphasizes the value we adults might find for our world if only we allowed ourselves to be childlike more often.  Listen to Adora here!

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Book Review – The Dream Manager

Last week I read The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly.  This business parable is set at a janitorial company facing huge turnover, as could be expected.  The premise is that the frustrated general manager decides that the key to keeping employees happier, and subsequently longer, is to hire a “dream manager”.  This person has a financial planning background, but a genuine interest in helping others create plans to accomplish their dreams, be it purchasing a new home, learning a language, or volunteering somewhere; there is no dream too big or small.

Typical in this genre, most of the profundity is woven into dialogue between predictable characters.  The simplicity of the wisdom is hard to miss and the message really comes down to a common thread from my own belief system:  we must compassionately care for other people.  As I’ve experienced in multiple industries and environments, if you truly identify and nurture what makes people individual, you can build teams that can accomplish nearly anything…then get better.
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I’ll give this one 3 out of 5 SutterStars (Yeah, I just made those up.) because it was an innovative concept, decently written, and gave me a new lens on a core value.  It may not change my life and didn’t knock my literary socks off, but I’d recommend it as a quick read where each page makes you feel good.

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Professional Learning Conception #2 – Peer Observation

One of the common things I’ve heard from teachers for years is that we want to “watch someone else do it”.  This concept led me to a team-teaching model in my classroom so that I could have the daily experience of teaching in front of a partner for feedback and learning from observing another’s style.  Even those who think having an audience is unnerving, by-and-large I still hear them voice a desire to see others teach.  In some cases we want affirmation that what we’re doing is right or good, in others we are looking for qualitative improvements that inform our own learning.  Emotions and reasons aside, there remain logistical challenges to implementing true team-teaching or peer observations to scale.

Consider this: A team has worked through the problem-solving of particular content.  From an instructional viewpoint and from looking at their student outcomes they created evidence that the methods they learned and used were really effective and brought the results they were seeking.  This is now part of their practice, so they’ve recorded a lesson, or maybe just a clip of the strategies, and placed it in a video library that you and your team can now access.  As you approach an evidenced-based challenge on your team, you realize you need outside support to complete a plan to help your students and develop your instruction. Can your team take a little “PD” time to watch these strategies and make them part of your plan?

OR

Your kids aren’t performing to the level you expect, but you can’t figure out what would improve the results you want to see.  Working with your team, you devise a plan to record things going on in the classroom.  Maybe it’s your own room, maybe it’s a team member’s room; it might be a specific lesson, time of day, or strategy; perhaps you want to see what the kids are doing or what the teacher is doing.  There are so many variables, but you know that reflecting upon seeing it in action is the key to improving it.  Is your team safe enough to observe and honestly reflect on each other’s private teaching?  Could your team take a little “PD” time to organize this record-and-review process for your professional learning and the sake of your kids?

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Athletic coaches and players watch video all the time to analyze individual and collective improvement.  We are so strapped for time and human resources in schools that instructional reflection is often relegated to the individual teacher, but digital videos are more available and efficient than ever.  It would seem that if learning by watching others remains a high interest among teacher, and we crave engaged learning, then we could use sparse resources and technology to fulfill a need that drives professional learning.

How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?

Posted in Coaching, Professional Learning Conceptions, Teachers | 2 Comments

Professional Learning Conception #1 – Managing Curriculum

For clarity, I am broadly defining curriculum as the standards AND materials used for instruction.  If you teach a curricular program in which lesson plans are provided, scripted, or otherwise laid out, there is still plenty of room for teachers to adjust, personalize, and target instruction for current student needs.  Likewise, if you teach a “less-than-formalized” curriculum where you must create themes, gather materials, and write lesson plans, there is more than ample room for the act of collaboratively managing the curriculum.  In both scenarios, professional learning is unavoidably central when student needs drive improved instruction.

Consider this: You are part of a department, grade-level team, or content team, who realizes that students need to know X, but aren’t getting it.  In this case, there are pieces of your lessons that need to be adjusted for these students or they just aren’t clear enough for you to teach them consistently or explicitly on your team (YOU have data that defines YOUR problem.).   There is time allotted for professional learning, so your team decides you need to spend it adjusting the lessons that are keeping your kids from learning X.  Included in this, your team realizes there are fundamental qualities of pedagogy you must incorporate, but there are also new elements of content and instruction you need to acquire through research or engaging other resources and support from within your building, district, or beyond (YOU have developed a plan.) Immediately, you will teach those lessons or changes to your students. (YOU have implemented YOUR plan.) As part of this plan, you will review new data showing if your kids learned X any better.  (YOU evaluated YOUR plan.)  This is the problem-solving process enacted in curriculum management.


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I propose that any professional would be hard-pressed to go through this process without enduring learning that develops collective and individual instructional quality for students.  This probably doesn’t sound incredibly far-fetched to teachers who go through this process on a daily basis in reflecting upon their instruction, but puts it in the context of a team using dedicated “PD” time to learn for and about their students.  When these enduring understandings are then defined and shared with other teams and buildings, the learning itself becomes part of the research and support that informs others’ plans.

How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?

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Defining Professional Learning

Understanding of professional development is not common.  “PD” is about as broadly understood as “curriculum”.  Both require conceptual clarification whenever we discuss them to be sure everyone in the conversation is talking about the same thing.  Is PD the timeslot in our schedule, the collaborative conversation in the hall, the conference we attended, the student work we reviewed?  It could be all of those or each of them.

I’m especially proud that our schools have explicitly defined and applied standards to professional learning stating that it is collaborative, job-embedded, and driven by the learning outcomes of students.  These defining features honor and expect the professionalism and ownership of students’ success by the teaching staff responsible for them.  As we head into political times of sometimes ridiculous “accountability” measures of teachers, there’s a comforting liberation in knowing that by professionally owning our learning and that of our students we are in fact inarguably accountable.  When people are trusted and supported in their own learning, it becomes authentic and effective.   We know this is true with our own students.
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In future posts, I will offer some conceptions of what this could look like in action.  I would love feedback on how you might integrate these into your professional learning.

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Where Have You Been?

Actually it’s me who’s been absent.  I knew I took a break from posting here, but didn’t realize that there are folks who look forward to reading my thinking.   A handful of people have emailed or stopped me to ask why I haven’t written in a while, which is a HUGE compliment.  I appreciate and thank each person who delights in throwing rocks at the moon with me, if you comment here or not.  Thank you!

The reasons for my absence are three-fold:  First, in January and February of this year  my brain received stimulation of the complexities of local and global public education issues at a staggering rate!  My normal processing of information through writing was overwhelmed.  Second, when overwhelmed it is easy for people to simplify ideas by prejudging into positive and negative categories.  When I recognized myself leaning toward a prematurely cynical evaluation of this flurry of thought, I wanted to keep this blog as a place to explore ideas and ideals.  Third, I realized that rhythm of active and inactive writing periods may be more authentic than trying to keep up with a weekly balance of publishing.
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Again, I extend a very personal and sincere thanks to anyone who enjoys reading and exploring with me here.

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