Prairie South School Division Conversations

1. Continuing to share the new work for schools, another change is:

A shift in the work of teachers from

• isolation to collaboration
• each teacher assigning priority to different learning standards to collaborative teams establishing the priority of respective learning standards
• each teacher determining the pacing of the curriculum to collaborative teams of teacher agreeing on common pacing
• individual teachers attempting to discover ways to improve results to collaborative teams of teachers helping each other improve
• private practice to open sharing of practice
• decisions made on the basis of individual preferences to decisions made collectively by building shared knowledge of exemplary practice
• “collaboration lite” on matters unrelated to student achievement to collaboration explicitly focused on issues & questions that most impact student achievement
• an assumption that these are my students, those are your students to an assumption that these are our students

2. When educators look at their schools, the following need to guide the changes:

A shift in focus from

• an external focus on issues outside of the school to an internal focus on steps the staff can take to improve the school
• a focus on teacher inputs to a focus on student outcomes/results
• goals related to completion of project & activities to SMART goals demanding evidence of student learning
• teachers gathering data from their individually constructed tests in order to assign grades to collaborative team acquiring information from common assessments in order to:

1. inform their individual & collective teaching practice &
2. respond to students who need additional time & support

A shift in school culture from

• independence to interdependence
• a language of complaint to a language of commitment
• long-term strategic planning to planning for short-term wins
• infrequent generic recognition to frequent specific recognition & a culture of celebration that creates many winners

3.  Finally, all of these changes mean that professional development will look very different from the many years of one-shot, awareness or information opportunities that teachers have experienced.  Professional development or professional learning will change to more job-embedded work – where teachers learn together in classrooms during their daily work to create common standards, measures and outcomes that may be shared with all Saskatchewan teachers and students.  This requires:

A shift in PD from

• external training (workshops & courses) expectation that learning occurs infrequently (on a few days devoted to PD) to job-embedded learning with an expectation that learning is ongoing & occurs as part of routine, daily work practice
• presentations to entire faculties to team-based action research
• learning by listening to learning by doing
• learning individually through courses & workshops to learning collectively by doing the work together
• assessing impact on the basis of teacher satisfaction (did you like it?) to assessing impact on the basis of evidence of improved student learning
• short-term exposure to multiple concepts & practices to sustained commitment to limited, focused initiatives

This post continues the explanation of changes that educators are
making in order to improve learning. The DuFours & Eaker (2006)
describe two further shifts:

A shift in the response when students don’t learn from

• individual teachers determining the appropriate response to a
  systematic response that ensures support for every student by all teachers
• fixed time & support for learning to time & support for
  learning as variables
• remediation to intervention
• invitational support outside the school day to directed &
  required support during the school day
• one opportunity to demonstrate learning to multiple opportunities
  to demonstrate learning

A shift
in the work of teachers from

• isolation to collaboration
• each teacher assigning priority to different learning standards to
  collaborative teams establishing the priority of respective learning
  standards
• each teacher determining the pacing of the curriculum to
  collaborative teams of teacher agreeing on common pacing
• individual teachers attempting to discover ways to improve results
  to collaborative teams of teachers helping each other improve
• private practice to open sharing of practice
• decisions made on the basis of individual preferences to decisions
  made collectively by building shared knowledge of exemplary practice
• “collaboration lite” on matters unrelated to student
  achievement to collaboration explicitly focused on issues & questions
  that most impact student achievement
• an assumption that these are my students, those are your students to
  an assumption that these are our students.

A second area of change is a shift in the use of assessments from

• assessing many things infrequently to assessing a few things frequently

• infrequent summative assessments (AOL) to frequent common formative assessments (AFL)

• assessments that show which students failed to learn by the deadline to assessments that identify students who need additional time & support

• students being receivers of assessment to assessment used instead to inform & motivate students on their own learning path & to inform teachers’ instruction

• from individual teacher designed assessments to common assessments developed jointly by collaborative teacher teams

• each teacher deciding the criteria used to assess student work to collaborative teacher teams deciding criteria & being sure of consistency among teachers as they assess student work

• over reliance on one or a few kinds of assessment to balanced assessments

• from focusing on averages to monitoring each students’ proficiency in every essential skill

We are seeing examples of these assessment shifts in several of the PLCs. One grade nine math PLC has developed common assessments that they use for pre & post checks on all units in their course. They take the pre-assessment results and group students according to learning outcome needs then design the instruction that will meet the students’ needs. They have also developed a common pacing guide that reflects how much time is spent on various curricular concepts.

We hear so much about the need for change in schools.  Increasingly busy teachers and administrators are asking for suggestions to help them understand what this involves. 

I like the way Eaker & Dufours (2006) explain school changes in their writing on PLCs.  They describe a series of shifts. 

The first is a shift in fundamental purpose from:

• a focus on teaching to a focus on learning
• an emphasis on what was taught to what students learned
• coverage of content to student demonstration of proficiency
• providing curriculum documents to individual teachers to figure out to engaging collaborative teams of teachers who build shared knowledge regarding essential curriculum.

The shifts make great criteria to guide us as we engage in change.

 Several other shifts will follow.

This video does an excellent job of illustrating the changing nature of text. Please add your comments.

[youtube]6gmP4nk0EOE[/youtube]