Tag Archives: PLC

Dumber or Just Different?

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This week, a colleague at school circulated the email below to a large number of faculty. The content of the inquiry has caused me to really think about some things. Here are a few of them:

  • Kudos to this educator for soliciting dialogue about an important learning issue! I love that instincts were to create a space for discussion and collaboration.
  • Thanks to this educator (and others who designed the PD day) for identifying a way to use in-service time for self-identified interests and innovations!
  • Could the texts we are asking students to read be part of the issue…rather than the length of the texts?
  • Years and years ago, was a similar message part of a tribal campfire discussion? “Villagers, we are having a harder and harder time getting children to tell stories around the campfire. Their oral memories are terrible! They want to look at these things called books. What should we do?” [please excuse the reductionist, less-than-accurate historical detail here]
  • Don’t people who write long books do so by examining small dollups of thinking? Don’t writers of long texts do so by writing smaller dollups of writing?
  • I read a lot of “sound bites” that I categorize with modern day tools so that I “study” an issue intensely from a number of different, inter-connected perspectives. When we think about a printed, long text, isn’t that exactly what we have access to via the words that the author decided to record – all the synthesized thinking that went into the recording of the text?
  • Why do we educators sometimes assume that just because the “kids don’t do it in school, they must not do it?” I am certain that our students are choosing to read and immerse themselves in some longer, richer texts…not because they are assigned in school, but because they are interesting outside of school.
  • Let’s search for the “both/and solution.” Students – all learners – should be able to do both/and…learn in sound bites and backchannels, as well as in longer, deeper texts, as well as…

Dear Colleagues,

Some of you may have seen Bob Ryshke’s recent posting of Mark Bauerlein’s article on thoughtful reading, “Too Dumb for Complex Texts.”  In a similar vein, I offer you a short blog post called “Are We Really Becoming More Stupid?”  Make sure you read the response, too:

http://www.prelude-team.com/blog/2010/10/05/are-we-really-becoming-more-stupid

The post and the response encapsulate neatly two different arguments about the way we (or some of us?) read today. 

My own experience in class over the last 2-3 years has been that of an increasing student unease with spending time with texts or even passages, and I have been wondering whether it is some way related to a rapidly emerging digital culture that privileges sound-bites, personal opinion (not informed judgement), and multi-tasking.  We have even seen some of our faculty peers engaging in technological multi-tasking by tweeting each other during presentations (so-called “back-channeling”).

I would be very interested in participating in a collaborative discussion with some of you about encouraging our students to read slowly and deeply — to give complex texts enough time to breathe.  The next in-service day looks like the perfect time to do this.  Let me know if you’re interested, and let’s start working on a reading list and/or an agenda for the day.

Finally, I thought of this TED talk…

Riffing, Swirling, and Boarding

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Had I taken my sabbatical more than four years ago, I believe that my time at Unboundary would have seemed like a journey to a foreign land. As it is now, Unboundary is very recognizable and familiar to me because of the work in which I have immersed myself regarding PLCs – professional learning communities.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge writes:

The tools and ideas presented in this book are for destroying the illusion that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces. When we give up this illusion – we can then build ‘learning organizations,’ organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.

During my first week as a sabbatical intern at Unboundary, I witnessed the power of three collaborative tools: riffing, swirling, and boarding.

  • Riffing is improvisational brainstorming. Often team members will declare that they are riffing. This seems to bring into play a set of unspoken, agreed-upon norms – these next ideas are for building more ideas, so don’t shoot them down and don’t add them to the more-concrete draft yet. Just hear me and think with me. Try to pick up a note that you can riff on, too.
  • Swirling is perspective and feedback seeking. It is asking for input and assessment. It provides evaluation from the standpoint of mixing things up so that new lenses can be applied to the thinking and creation.
  • Boarding is communal mind-mapping. Making boards literally means putting index cards up on a tack-board wall (often movable panels) in order to outline and storyboard an idea. By utilizing a board, big-picture visualization and idea connectivity is facilitated.

Watching an Unboundary team riff, swirl, and board is akin to watching a PLC. In a PLC, team members work through the four questions: 1) what should be learned, 2) how will we know if learning is happening, 3) what will we do if it has already been learned, and 4) what will we do if it is not being learned. In a PLC, this work is accomplished collaboratively through such practices as analyzing student work, establishing SMART goals and essential learnings, engaging in lesson study, and participating in instructional rounds. By working together and breaking out of the traditionally isolated way of working in schools, PLC members are able to riff, swirl, and board their ideas…all for the benefit of learning. WE are smarter than ME. Therefore, schools need to ensure time and space for teachers to work together as lead learners, rather than continuing on the path of the egg-crate culture typical of most schools.

In the 21st century, schools and other businesses – all learning organizations – must partner together to share productive and innovative techniques. We need to expand our capacities to create the results we truly desire, we need to nurture new and expansive patterns of thinking, we need to set free our collective aspirations, and we need to learn how to learn together. We need to riff, swirl, and board…together. We need to unboundary ourselves and strive for more significance…together. Imagine the thinking that school and business could do as a team. Imagine the thinkers we would facilitate in schools – thinkers who would grow into the business leaders of tomorrow. Imagine the learning that could happen!

– Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday. Accessed via e-copy on Amazon Kindle App for iPad.

Connections! English and Art

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I really don’t have time to be writing a post, just now, at this moment. However, a team of English teachers in the Junior High School  included me on an email distributing a rubric for a current exploration of the god-teacher archetype, and I am blown away! I feel positively compelled to sing their praises.

Why am I blown away?

  • The rubric is designed for facilitating a detailed feedback to student learners.
  • The rubric is designed for providing feedback about the visual attributes of an assessment submission related to some complex understanding of the archetype.
  • The rubric was developed from the 6+1 Writing Traits Rubric, and the connections among the written word and the visual image are astounding – the direct comparison between the two assessment tools is so cool.
  • The developing teachers worked in PLC to advance their response to the critical questions: 1) what should students learn?, and 2) how will we know if they are learning?
  • The developing teachers include English teachers and an art teacher – the paths to developing project-based learning and integrated studies are more and more becoming the visible, rather than hidden, routes to improved instruction and learning. Collaboration is increasingly important to us as we seek to enhance learning at deep levels.
  • The sharing of the instrument was quick and assumed.
  • I understand how intense this type of assessment work can be, so I appreciate the effort that this extended team put into the process.

I could keep writing bullet points all afternoon. I am so appreciative of these teachers – these lead learners – finding ways to innovate, create, repurpose, and design. THANK YOU!

Held Accountable

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Principals, other school admin, teachers, educators, and other learners…STOP! and READ! Bill Ferriter’s The Tempered Radical blog post “What I’d Hold YOU Accountable For.” From the perspective of this principal teacher, Bill’s tweet and post are right on the money…they certainly do NOT rub me the wrong way. May I strive to live and lead by his recommendations!

Are we creating the conditions necessary for innovation in schools? Are we leading learning innovation?

In an effort to complement Bill’s post, I offer these supports, suggestions, and examples:

  1. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and rebuild an infrastructure that provides for a powerful community of learners. The PLC infrastructure is well-researched, well-documented, and well-utilized (in many places). At the Junior High at Westminster, we have adopted and adapted an aggressive model – replace a class in the rotating schedule with an opportunity for regular, job-embedded PLC work. Our teams meet four days per week, for 55-minutes each day…just like our student learners meet for math, English, science, etc. Additionally, we use a co-facilitator, teacher-leader model, and we rely on a PLC structure to support the facilitators of the various teams. As a facilitator PLC, we meet one day per week for face-to-face time.
  2. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and leverage social media to provide an “anywhere, anytime” PLC/PLN. For the past month, a growing team of teachers at Westminster has been engaged in the “20 minute experiment” on Twitter. Take a look…
  3. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and implement a faculty assessment plan that holds growth and development more dear than evaluation. Let’s conduct “physicals” rather than “autopsies.” We are several years into this process at Westminster.
  4. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and promote innovation, creative thinking, and project-based learning. Find ways to highlight the experiments, innovations, prototypes, and trials of an amazing faculty of lifelong learners.

And, in conlusion for this post, to put the proverbial cherry on top, be sure to watch this Jay McTighe video…
http://jplgough.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/learning-habit-assumptions-experience-practice-and-empathy/

It’s about learning…and learning is all about prototyping, which is just a pretty euphemism for trying, practicing, failing, and trying again.

Pull Together: Part II

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I hope I do not sound overly paternalistic when I say, “I am so proud of the teams of teachers in our Junior High!” Currently, our PLC (professional learning community) facilitators are enacting an action research project. We are facilitating the construction of essential learnings for an upcoming unit of instruction in our various PLCs (math, English, science, history, Spanish, etc.). Among the groups, essential learnings exist at various stages and phases. Some teams are a year or more into the process. Others are just starting. Some take to it like a fish to water. Others struggle. Sounds like any learning endeavor, doesn’t it?!

To help find common ground in our journeys to establish essential learnings, we decided to “shrink the change” (from Switch, by Dan and Chip Heath). What if all the PLCs worked on essential learnings for an upcoming unit? Could that help us all to understand essential learnings more deeply? Could such a project illustrate a variety of ways for teams to respond to the first essential question of all PLCs: What should students learn?

After a few facilitator workshop meetings, in which we strived to understand the basic processes of establishing essential learnings, we got to work in our various PLCs. Take a look at the method the Junior High Math PLC used to discuss and enhance the vertical alignment of their established and evolving essential learnings in 6th through 8th grade math.

Can you fathom the potential of this team-oriented work? They are breaking down the silos of individual courses and teachers. They are building an essential learnings “scope and sequence” to ensure that our math students develop deep and enduring understanding of critical math concepts. To know what students should learn then allows us to build assessment strategies to ensure that deep learning is occuring and enduring. And we can work out the kinks of overlaps and gaps so that student-learning is part of a system, rather than a vaccuum.

In the background of the current, short version of the video, the Science 8 PLT is completing a new draft of their essential learnings. Those go on the board next! Can you see what’s coming? The potential for integrated studies that weave together the related essentials of math and science. [I am looking forward to showcasing that video journal.] What potential! I am so proud of our teams of teachers learners! When we pull together, we can accomplish more.