teacher development
Joining in the Present to Build an Equitable Shared Future: A Collaboration of Teachers to Study How they Embody the Principle of Equity
Adam Kinory at the School of the Future in New York, NY and his colleagues are educators who sought to reconstitute the long dormant New York City Chapter of the New York State English Council and National Council of Teachers of English. The chapter will be open to any teacher, across content areas, that seeks to improve their instruction of reading/writing, with the nucleus of teachers being from their school. The process of forming a chapter, will provide a vision around which teachers at the school can unite, learn to improve their ability to collaborate, while also address inequities in student achievement. By coming together in service of starting a NCTE chapter they hoped to prioritize creating a shared, preferred, vision of the future over of the self-flagellation and critique that too often results in pessimism and disenfranchisement.
What is the project and their goals?
Join in the Present to Build an Equitable Shared Future is a collaboration across teachers to look at how they embody the principle of equity in interactions with each other and students they teach. To accomplish this, they had two goals.
- They wanted to read a shared text, using protocols, and rotate the role of the facilitator. They sought to create a sense of “equity” amongst teachers and empower them with the tools they needed to take charge of their own professional development.,
- Using this core group of educators, They wanted to form an affiliate chapter of the national council of teachers of English (N.C.T.E..)to plan a conference, where participants would have a shared experience of creating something new. Through their new chapter creation, they could adjust social norms and reflect on how equity informs decisions that are made.
What did they accomplish?
The project goals were met and new a project was created.
Using the teachings of Peter Block’s text Community, they rotated the role of the facilitator, and used the protocols of the National School Reform Faculty, and ensured that everyone was “equal” in the control they had over the destiny of the group.
In re-starting the New York City chapter, Adam joined the board by request and attended board meetings regularly. They learned that the United Federation of Teachers (U.F.T) already had an existing New York City affiliate of the N.C.T.E., however the affiliate was dormant. The N.C.T.E wanted to restart the chapter but did not have a point person to do this for them. Adam worked with the representatives of the U.F.T to restart the committee and held two committee meetings.
Shared read became a separate project. Teachers across grades 6-10 met and engaged in a shared read of professional text, and used it to explore how to improve equity in teacher-teacher and teacher-student relationships. In creating equity by conducting a shared read at school, they established a common vocabulary as to the characteristics of an equitable community and have taken steps to integrate those characteristics within their pedagogy. Teachers have reported that their participation has led them to re-conceptualize how to interact with their students, reconsider curriculum, and clarify their own sense of mission and purpose.
What challenges did they come up against?
Trust was the most basic challenge. Building trust was a challenge in reinstating the affiliate committee with the U.F.T. Trust was a challenge that made it uncomfortable to collaborate with people that Adam had not worked with before and to make sure people felt free to talk. Participants did not immediately take to the text of Community.
Exciting Projects
The committee has less than dozen people from across New York City. They hope to grow the committee over the new few years.
They are considering two specific protocols to utilize within their practice.
They are considering a shared read of Freedom and Accountability at Work by Peter Koestenbaum and Peter Block. By having a shared read of this text, participants will have the opportunity to explore how to deal with the anxiety that comes from having choices and control over our own lives and dealing with the denial that those choices exist as such denial often leads to hierarchy as people trade their freedom for certainty. If we accept our anxiety and explore the root of it, we can create equity in our relationships with ourselves and others.
The Second consideration for a shared read is Collaborating with the Enemy, by Adam Kahane. If this shared read is chosen, participants would explore how to build equitiy and agreement even when they fundamentally disagree with the most basic assumptions of those they engage with. They want to move from the broad sense of “equity” by design to choosing and using
specific protocols to evolve the way they structure interactions that address the following questions: How do we maintain a stance of equity when interacting with those who seem to diametrically stand in opposition to us? How do we clarify the choices before us so that we do not blame some outside force (other teachers, the principal, parents) for our own disappointments? What does equity look like when we are attuned to our own neurosis?
Further Reading
- Equity in Education: Where to Begin?
- 9 Ways to Promote Equity in Our Schools
- What Research Can Tell Us About Educational Equity Guiding Principles for Equity Part 2: Drive Your Equity Plan
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Math and Maritime Place-Based Learning – M2BPL Re-thinks Math Workshop
Math and Maritime Place-Based Learning
Rig up the mast, batten down the hatch and come sail away with the educators at the Blue Heron School in Port Townsend, Washington as they embark on their exciting project: Math and Maritime Place-Based Learning – M²PBL. The district’s Maritime Discovery Schools Initiative (MDSI), implemented in 2014, is guiding their transformation by encouraging teachers to change instructional pedagogy, increase student engagement, and experience connections between classrooms and business partners. This proposal develops 30 teachers over three years.
What exactly is the Math and Maritime Place-Based Learning – M2PBL?
Research has shown these educators that students benefit highly from using a Math Workshop (MW) model.
When executed successfully, MW models support a culture of underlying beliefs:
- all students are capable of quality thinking;
- participation through hands-on activities and discourse builds student thinking;
and - through true engagement, all young minds can make real sense of mathematics.
An engaging environment is also the premise for Project Based Learning (PBL), where students use 21st century skills to learn collaboratively while working on projects to benefit themselves and others. The M²PBL proposed a structure for K-8 teachers to collaborate and design sense-making math environments tailor made for their students.
Through deepening knowledge of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM) – particularly in Number and Operations, Measurement, and Geometry – teacher teams (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) focused on:
1) Number Talks (NT), a workshop element where students apply and verbally share strategies to solve and improve mental computations (number fluency),
and
2) PBL projects to apply students’ growing math strategies and conceptual knowledge. The MDSI promotes community partnerships between the school district and maritime-related industries.
As exciting as this is for the teachers, when the students get involved it brings it to another level. The educators are partnering with Port Townsend Sails, a local business specializing in “quality sails for traditional and modern rigs.” Teachers, students, and employees will collaborate to explore authentic mathematics on-site in the sail loft. There, and in classrooms, student mathematicians will count and measure to possibly build boats, design sails, and and/or navigate!
What were the goals for M²PBL?
They had two primary goals to accomplish in year one. They wanted answers to the following questions:
- How do Number Talks increase the quality of students’ number fluency?
- Does authentic application of number fluency deepen student learning in project-based mathematics?
Eleven teachers initially met for professional learning in an elementary group and an intermediate group; each grade level met for two full days (early fall and mid-winter).
Those teachers recorded 10 half-day visits into classrooms (using a substitute) which totaled to around 15-20 visits arranged during planning times and/or with colleagues to “step out” for a short period to observe. One teacher also requested a grade level team observation one morning, so three teachers not technically a part of the grant this year joined in on observations of Number Talks. This was a productive way to share knowledge around fluency outside of the core group. Teacher texts, classroom fluency instructional materials, and PBL supplies were purchased. Items included: student journals, chart paper/markers, wood (for boats), bird feeders, bird ID texts, meter tapes, weights, calculators (specifically for order of operations), and math manipulatives for Family Math Night (dice, spinners, etc.). There, two classes taught fluency activities to parent/students, and the activities went home for continued learning. In-kind donations included dowels (masts), sail cloth (from PT Sails), sand paper/wood pieces for sanding blocks from the high school shop. Volunteer support was received from parents (chaperones), the Schooner Martha captain and family, the Northwest Maritime Center/Wooden Boat Foundation shop personnel, Carol Hasse and crew of Port Townsend Sails, the PT High School STEM/maritime students, and parents to help first graders drill boats for the mast and to tack sails to masts.
What were some of the challenges?
As we can see, they’ve been busy this year. But like all new project ideas, they are not without challenges. The biggest challenge was the collaborative work that required teachers to be out of their classrooms. One participant asked that her grade level team be able to collaborate around classroom observations, and that was accomplished. It’s also been more difficult than anticipated to get teachers to keep up with data collection. But they are already coming up with ideas on how to improve next year. Things like: 1) Supporting a full day of professional learning around math fluency/PBL for any teacher not involved in year one who volunteers (sub time/materials stipend); 2) Supporting grade level teams to collaborate around math fluency through collegial visits/observations (sub time); 3) And finally, approaching Port Townsend Rigging Company as an additional maritime partner to help expand and grow the program for years to come.
All in all, it’s an exciting project to see come together. We’re all waiting with bated breath for this ship to come back to harbor with tales of their next success.
Learn more
- Project-Based Learning: Students actively investigate solutions to complex, long-term challenges, often in groups
- Problem-Based Learning in Mathematics: ERIC Digest
- Maritime Discovery Schools Initiative
- Maritime Discovery update: Students helping salmon
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Waltham Integration Network: Connecting Teachers to Investigate and Improve Digital Learning Across Contexts
It’s easy, as an educator, to feel like an unmoored ship in a vast sea. Pricks of light in the distance indicate other ships, largely unreachable. Even though teachers in the same districts and schools work closely in a physical sense the gulf of communication can be vast and many good ideas and techniques are not shared and refined amongst a larger pool of minds.
This is what Elizabeth Homan, of Waltham Public Schools in Waltham, MA, is changing with her program Waltham Integration Network: Connecting Teachers to Improve and Investigate Digital Learning in Urban Settings. While the name is complicated, the aims are simple. This project proposed to bring together a small group of teacher leaders from across an urban school district to engage in collaborative inquiry and teacher-research related to the integration of digital technologies in classroom practice. The goal of this project is twofold: (1) research the challenges and possibilities of digital integration in a high-needs urban school district, and (2) increase the capacity of the district’s digital professional learning opportunities for teachers.
How can collaborative inquiry for teacher development work?
By keeping research at its center, engaging teachers in conversations about “what works” for their digital learning, and helping teachers support their colleagues in reinventing their teaching to meet the needs of today’s very “plugged in” learners. The first year was largely preparatory with an articulation of goals and a formulation of an action plan that would turn into quarterly meetings.
At the start of the project, cohort members worked to identify the student learning goals for the year and articulate how their goals could be measured using qualitative or quantitative classroom data. These goals could be as simple as learning how to create and fully integrate a new tool, such as a classroom website, or it may involve an entirely new approach to instruction, such as “flipping” the classroom. Later in the year, team members shared classroom artifacts, lesson plans, and examples of videotaped practice from their classrooms with other team members in quarterly face-to-face workshops, connecting their practice with research-based approaches and examples.
The project will continue to meet these goals through recruitment of additional teachers, teacher mentorship of new recruits, sharing teacher work through the blog and, in the summer, development of video evidence of teacher practice with technologies.
How can collaborative inquiry impact educators?
The educators at Waltham Public Schools have been busy. In their first year they have recruited research assistants to help mentor teachers at the middle and elementary school levels. They have also developed a number of #WINproj spaces for sharing practice. From their blog (walthamintegrationnetwork.org) to their twitter hashtag (#WINproj) and Facebook page, these educators have worked this year to foster a digital voice for the network and to develop consistent expectations around the content and design of their website/blog and social media interactions. The teachers have worked throughout the year to archive photos, examples of student work, or videos of their practice, which they will use this coming summer to develop video reflections on their experience and what they have learned. And because the project and leader are new to the district, much of this year has been about building relationships, learning what’s happening in the buildings, and building excitement for the project.
How can collaborative inquiry improve instruction and pedagogy?
The first and most obvious benefit is a larger network of teachers and educators who have bridged the communication gap. Partnerships between teachers have formed both online and in person. The teachers are also becoming increasingly proficient with web writing and familiarity with the online tools such as the blogs and message boards. It’s clear they’ve been doing something right as they’ve been asked to present at the National Council of Teachers of English in November which will serve to get the word out about the program and widen the network of the educators involved.
How could this program be improved?
According to the team, the biggest challenge the program participants faced was that of time. Not expectantly they had trouble with the temporal logistics of getting so many teachers in the same space physically. More support and training for online meeting spaces is paramount for the growth of this project.
On a lesser, but no less important note, they found that some teachers needed to get acclimated to blogging. While they’re perfectly proficient in the classroom, the public articulation of methods of pedagogy doesn’t come easy for everyone. More support for first time bloggers would have a large impact on the productivity and communication between all parties.
Learn More
- Connecting a Classroom: Reflections on Using Social Media With My Students
- A Guidebook for Using Social Media in the Classroom
- Social Media Made Simple
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Teaching for Social Justice creates change for teachers and students
Back in May we introduced you to an innovative and exciting project being spearheaded by Scott Storm and the educators at Harvest Collegiate High School called Teaching for Social Justice. While it’s only been a few months since the original blog post, “Teaching for Social Justice transforms curriculum, educator mindset and improves student learning” (May 2016), it’s been two years since the McCarthy Dressman Education Foundation funded this project. We are exciting to be brining you another update on this effort to improve effectiveness and equity in high school classrooms.
Before we can talk about what they are doing now, let’s revisit the project’s original goals. “Teaching for Social Justice” aims to design curriculum, support the development of teachers as social justice educators, and disseminate these lessons to progressively wider audiences. This requires a break from a dominant paradigm which views teaching as monologic, teacher-centered, and lecture-based. The following goals have been explored in this project.
- Design and revise courses to better support teaching for social justice.
- Conduct cycles of teacher inquiry and action research to further teaching and learning.
- Develop and grow a Professional Learning Community in our school that shares curricular materials, participates in peer-observation, and supports each other in formal and informal ways toward the goal of teaching for social justice.
- Disseminate our curriculum and research to teachers, teacher-educators, and the public.
Recipient Scott Storm explains, “In our work, we saw that the conception of teaching for social justice has been theorized from disparate, sometimes contradictory, epistemological and ideological positions. Our project aims to mesh these theoretical stances in locally situated practice.”
What kind of teacher development efforts strengthen social justice pedagogy?
In the past two years they have made a lot of progress on the following four goals. We’ve shared them below with some examples of student work in this teacher development project.
Goal 1: Design and revise courses to better support the Teaching of Social Justice
- Curriculum Retreats: In the first year of the project they held Curriculum Retreats to promote ideas for new courses, start to draft the courses, and reflect on their past work.
- New And Revised Courses:
o Fall 2014, New Course: “Identity Quest”
o Fall 2014, Revised Course: “Constructing Monsters”
o Spring 2015, New Course: “Lit Crit & Grit”
o Spring 2015, New Course: “Pop!”
o Winters 2015 and 2016, New Course: “Writer’s Retreat”: They created a new course for the January term (two weeks) called “Writer’s Retreat” in which 26 students traveled to a cabin (with no Internet, television or other electronic distractions) for several days. Many of the students came out of this experience with stronger writing skills.
o Fall 2015, New English Course—“Human Nature”: In this class students read Locke, Hobbs, & Rousseau alongside Lord of the Flies and Macbeth. Students explored ethical and moral issues and participated in group simulations and role-playing activities that identified ethics, oppression, and privilege.
o Spring 2016, New English Course—“Dysfunctional Love”: This course engaged students in questions around love and relationships through some classic literature. Students read Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and other texts. Students talked through difficult issues while also analyzing textual form.
o 2015-2016 School Year, New Course—“AP English Literature & Composition”: This past year they offered an AP English Course open to all students. They recruited from special education classes, English Language Learners, low-income students, and those who are normally not encouraged to take AP at other schools. Students read poetry and many works including: Pride & Prejudice, The Sound and The Fury, Mrs. Dalloway, Invisible Man, Waiting for Godot, The Woman Warrior, Beloved, Midnight’s Children, Angels in America, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Some essential questions that guided these courses were “what is literature—and what do we do with it?” and “what is the relationship between form and meaning?” The assessment at the end of the unit asked students to use the theories of literary modernism to create their own short stories, poems, paintings, or musical scores, and then present and/or perform these at an evening coffee-house event.
Goal 2: Conduct cycles of teacher inquiry and action research to further teaching and learning.
- Teacher Research Team: For the past two years, Teacher Research Teams conducted inquiry on their teaching. They developed essential questions, created research designs, discussed relevant scholarship/literature, collected data, and analyzed the data together using qualitative research.
- English Department as Teacher Inquiry Team: Teachers focused on two areas: reading literary texts and writing as process. For each of these inquiries, they read articles about pedagogy around close reading, conducted their own close readings together, analyzed student work, planned for implementing shared practices, implemented these practices, analyzed post-intervention data, and created a plan for future directions.
- Classroom Ethnography Project: Teachers in the teacher research team served as ethnographic participant observers in each other’s classes (one or two periods a day). The dialogue between the teacher and the researcher improved both teaching and student learning.
Goal 3: Develop and Grow a Professional Learning Community in our school
- The Teacher Summit: A “Teacher Summit” was a day-long conference where half of the faculty presented on the courses they developed, on a portfolio of their work, or on one of their teacher inquiry projects. The faculty were excited for continued improvement of their teaching and the enhancement of their professional community.
- Teacher Learning Teams:
o Year One: In the first year of the project they brought together three teacher teams focused on: 1) descriptive review of student work in order to reflect on and refine teaching practices; 2) designing and implementing intervention plans for high-need students.; and 3) use of Critical Friends Group protocols from the National School Reform Faculty to fine-tune curriculum and assessment. Year one was about deep understanding and new knowledge.
o Year Two: In the second year of the project, they had the teachers from each of these teams use the skills that they had learned the first year to spread this learning so that all teachers became more familiar with these methods.
o Teacher Study Group: Each semester the Teacher Study Group chose a focus of study. In the fall, the group looked at “questioning as pedagogical tool” and in the spring they explored “formative assessment.” Each week they read a peer-reviewed journal article about the topic and discussed how this could improve their practice.
o Whole-Faculty Peer-Observations: In year one they had all teachers conduct a series of monthly peer-observations. They continued this practice in year two which has been helpful for the teachers to see themselves as a community of practitioners rather than individual silos.
Goal 4: Disseminate Curriculum and Research
There has been substantial progress in this area. They have written conference proposals, presented at conferences, and had articles published about their work!
- Publication: Storm, S. (2016). “Teacher-Researcher-Leaders: Intellectuals for Social Justice” Schools: Studies in Education. 13.1 57-75.
- Academic Conference Presentations:
o February 2015, “Tensions in the Teaching for Social Justice” presented at the University of Pennsylvania’s Ethnography in Education Forum.
o December 2015, “Adolescents Enacting Disciplinary Literacy in English Literature: Education for Social Justice or Model of Cultural Reproduction?” presented at the Literacy Research Association’s annual conference in Carlsbad, CA
o December 2015, “Epistemological Tensions in Teaching for Social Justice: A Case Study” presented at the Literacy Research Association’s annual conference in Carlsbad, CA.
o February 2016, “Reading Literary Criticism: Method of Critical Liberation or Tool of Cultural Assimilation?” presented at the University of Pennsylvania’s Ethnography in Education Forum.
- Other Presentations/Workshops
o Fall 2015, Critical Pedagogy Workshop for Student Teachers: Swarthmore College
o Fall 2015, Grammar/Writing Pedagogy for Justice Workshop for Student Teachers: Swarthmore College
o Spring 2015, Teachers as Researchers Presentation for pre-service English education students at the University of Pittsburgh
o Spring 2015, NYC Writing Project Teacher to Teacher Conference—one of our colleagues presented her work at this conference.
Additionally, they have submitted a number of presentations that are currently under review.
How does social justice pedagogy impact teachers and students?
They have definitely been busy and while it is great to hear what they have accomplished, it is even more important to hear about how they are doing. We also wanted to know how the teachers responded and how this has impacted students.
This project allowed teachers to collaborate, build shared professional knowledge, and to work toward social justice. In the first year of the project they did a lot of capacity-building as they worked to develop the skills of teacher-researchers. This year they have gotten to reap the benefits of putting so much time and energy into these activities.
In a reflective meeting in August before they started the new school year, one teacher remarked, “it’s incredible how much we learned…and now we get to use it all year!”
The English department in particular had some major achievements. They continue to create new courses that leverage students’ strengths and engage them in rigorous intellectual instruction. This has been a benefit to both teachers and their students.
At the school-wide level, the team is seeing the benefits of training teachers in peer observation, descriptive review, equity interventions, and Critical Friends protocols. Teachers who were participants in these groups last year are leading these activities in their departments and their grade teams. One teacher remarked, “I just feel like the tools that we have now let us actually focus on teaching and learning more and that to me is what improves practice.”
Finally, a big achievement this year has been having some of the teachers going to and presenting at conferences. At the conferences they shared their work with a wider audience. By doing this, they are hoping to improve practice beyond their school.
The teachers are not alone in being recipients of the benefits of this program. Students across the school were able to engage in interesting and deeper work through the courses that they have designed. Through the AP English course, students who might not have access to this level of work in another school were able not only to access the curriculum but also really thrived in this environment. One of the assessments in the course had students write an 8-10 page literary analysis on a book and question/topic of their choice and then present their work in an oral defense to a panel of external examiners. The examiners used a rubric to score the student’s work. One of the teachers, who has been doing this type of work for a decade, said of the students, “I have never seen so many students get [the highest level of the rubric] on projects like this. Our students have really learned how to do so much.”
Here is a sample of some students and the titles of their papers:
- Leo R. – “Flower Imagery in Mrs. Dalloway“
- Elijah R. – “The Comparative Use of Animals in Modernism and Postmodernism”
- Omar C. – “To Close Read or Not To Close Read: Resolving the Epistemological Tensions Between Close Reading and Pleasure Reading”
- Emely H. – “The Gothic: A Solace for Humanity”
- Michelle H. – “The Coalition of Inner versus Outer Self in Palahniuk’s Fight Club”
- Francisca H. – “Accepting the Inevitable: A Discussion of Death and Time in Mrs. Dalloway and Beloved“
- Vanessa P. – “Forming Identity with Talk-Story in The Woman Warrior”
- Lucas G. – “Beloved: Redefining Motherhood Through the Language of Obligation”
- Nafissa M. – “Literary Era and the Construction of Motherhood”
As exciting as this project is, it’s not without it’s challenges and ways to improve. While many of the challenges from year one were about creating buy in and building capacity, the challenges the second year have been about sustainability. The teachers have found themselves with less time budgeted for professional development meetings than they would like but they are working around it as best they can. Additionally, it has been difficult to get teachers to write about their experiences for wider audiences. To address these for next year, they are scheduling more time to write, reflect and think about how they can frame their learning for wider audiences. They have also started to have more teachers present at conferences to “get their feet wet” in conversations beyond their school.
Challenges aside, it sounds like this program is reaping benefits that ripple far beyond teacher development. Students who were never given this opportunity are excelling and teachers are learning to better serve those students. The pursuit of Social Justice is an invaluable virtue but this program goes to show it can also be a valuable teaching tool.
Where can I learn more about implementing a social justice curriculum?
- Education for Liberation Network (http://www.edliberation.org/)
- Rethinking Schools (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/)
- Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum, International Journal of Multicultural Education (2012)(http://www.ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/484)
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Teachers Solve Problems in Collaboration to Improve Mathematics Instruction in Project RENEW
We talk a lot about how isolating it can be to be a teacher, but nowhere is that more apparent than in small, rural districts. The teachers there are often the only instructor for a single subject. This is especially difficult for such an important and variable subject as mathematics. As Phillips and Hughes explain:
“Too often, teachers do not have sufficient opportunities to work together to examine work and structure interventions within their classrooms.
As the new standards are implemented, we must ensure that teachers are not left alone to figure out how best to teach to them.
The standards are an opportunity for greater collaboration, fresher thinking, and a rearticulation of shared goals for teachers and students.
By collaborating with each other and with instructional specialists through cycles of examining student work, creating hypotheses about how to implement common-core-aligned lessons, implementing them, and making adjustments in their practice in real time, teachers can find the best ways to help their students reach these higher expectations while still maintaining individual styles and flexibility.” (2012, Education Week)
With multiple levels and subjects within it, math is a daunting subject to teach. But that’s what the educators at West Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas plan to do.
What is Project RENEW?
Project RENEW emphasizes the development of deeper content knowledge among teachers, as well as pedagogical knowledge aligned with a standards-based approach to content teaching. By building a cadre of elite math educators, the teachers at West Elementary School aim to create an easily adoptable model to improve math scores within their district and beyond.
What are the project goals?
With the adoption of a much more rigorous set of standards, Common Core Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), the teachers at West Elementary realized that they must rethink how they teach mathematics. So, they came up with the following goals:
- Increase student achievement in mathematics for ALL students in grades K-12.
- Strengthen the content and pedagogical knowledge of K-12 teachers.
- Increase the implementation of CCSS-based mathematics instruction and curriculum in K-12 classrooms.
- Strengthen and expand existing leadership opportunities for teachers in mathematics to enhance collaboration to address the needs of K-12 schools, especially in small rural school districts.
The project proposed that by completing goals two through four (strengthening teachers, instruction and math leadership) that goal one (improved student achievement in math) would follow shortly after.
How did this project strengthen teaching in mathematics?
Project participants attended a summer math academy to develop CCSSM aligned curriculum and tasks. This academy helped the group understand their current practice and focus on ways to improve it.
First, teachers were pre-tested on their mathematical knowledge in relation to how they would implement mathematical practices in the classroom and had to submit an “action plan related to these practices and instructional strategies used for implementation.”
Next, they were observed during instruction and given feedback during professional development sessions.
In addition to this, teachers in smaller districts nearby that do not have funding for professional development and/or resources were contacted by the teachers from Project RENEW. Together, they were able to share resources and provide professional development for these small districts. Funds provided by McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation were also used to purchase new materials for the academy, so they were able to box up their “used” standards-based textbooks, load them up in a truck and delivered them to four different districts in the area.
How did this project impact the math instruction?
After a year of funding they’ve improved “by leaps and bounds and are ready to tackle the next steps” according to the project report.
The difference between the teacher Pre-Test and Post-Test was phenomenal. The average score starting out was a 2/7 correct responses and by the end that average had improved to 5/7. That’s 42.8% improvement in teacher knowledge of how to implement math instruction for CCSSM.
Teachers were also observed showing marked improvements on their in class instructional skills, particularly in the realm of “providing problem solving opportunities for their students, requiring productive struggle and discourse.”
To further extend the benefits of the program in their community, the teachers involved in the project were also responsible for disseminating what they learned in professional development sessions with the smaller districts.
What knowledge would they share with teachers exploring similar projects?
Like many of these ambitious projects one of the hurdles that must be overcome is the lack of resources. Even with the grant funding, they were unable to accommodate all the educators they would have liked to. The waitlist for additional involvement is long and shows no sign of letting up, much to the disappointment of those who know the project’s promise. In the future, they plan to video tape the lessons to help smaller districts to gain access to this valuable resource. This will be a focus in the year to come.
Also of note, the implementation of this program might encounter challenges operating on a larger scale due to the vast time requirements put on the educators and the stipends needed to cover their time. They hope that in the coming years that the texts, videos, and seminars resulting from this program will be able to be adapted for use by other districts and schools around the country.
Further Readings
- Report: Teacher Leadership Is Key to Common Core Success (2015, THE Journal)
- Teacher Leadership, Collaboration, and Common Core State Standards (2015, Learning First Alliance)
- Teacher Collaboration: Keys to Common Core Success (2014, AMLE)
- Teacher Collaboration: The Essential Common-Core Ingredient (2012, Education Week)
Additional Resources
- Mathematics Standards
- Common Core Standards Initiative
- Math Playground: Play with Math and Give your Brain a Workout
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Lesson Study Improves Science Instruction
It’s no secret that Lesson Study works.
There are many, well documented success stories and it has been used to great effect in Japan.
There’s a reason Japanese students consistently score in the top ten in the Organization for Economic Operation and Development’s Programme for Student Assessment. But today’s blog isn’t about Japan, it’s about improving the quality of elementary level science instruction and how the educators at Long Branch Elementary in Liverpool, New York are doing it.
What is lesson study?
For those that may not know, Lesson Study is a widely utilized collaborative professional development practice (2015, Wikipedia). Lesson Study starts with a group of educators that pick a content focus with the express purpose of preparing a research lesson. That group will convene regularly to share research, discuss national, state and local education policies and standards correlating to the subject at hand. This enables teachers from a wide variety of subjects and disciplines to cross-pollinate their ideas and research with one another in a directed and focused environment. By observing and critiquing each other’s lessons and delivery these educators are able to elevate each other’s abilities and knowledge base. And by the transitive property, the students are exposed to a well-constructed lesson plan.
How are the teachers at Long Branch Elementary using lesson study?
These educators decided to focus their lesson study efforts on the sciences, including studying a national framework for science education and how they could adopt it to fit their specific needs.
According to their proposal, they wanted to be guided by the following three questions:
- How do we design science instruction that makes students’ thinking visible?
- How can we meet our students’ needs and simultaneously address the new science framework?
- How will evidence of students’ learning be used to help us revise our original lesson?
What did they learn?
The project at Long Branch Elementary has been so successful that their program and teaching tools have spread to two other schools in the region, with educators from those schools now participating in the lesson study program. In addition, at the time of their report, they had three out of the four research cycles completed and implemented, with the final research team in the midst of their own cycle and well on their way to completion.
The educators participating expanded their knowledge base about claims/evidence, science content knowledge, and constructivist methods for teaching elementary science. The teachers also expressed “self-efficacy and confidence in regards to teaching claims and evidence, using inquiry-based instruction and teaching with student science notebooks.”
Teachers weren’t the only ones to benefit. Students had the opportunity to collect data, engage in scientific experimentation and increased the level of science knowledge throughout the course of the cycle.
How did Lesson Study support improved science instruction?
Understandings gleaned from the Lesson Study were used to inform instruction. For example, educators learned that it can be difficult to facilitate discussions with students with varying levels of comfort with the subject matter. Teachers report that teaching students to make claims based on evidence has been a bit of a pedagogical challenge, as the students tend to confuse evidence with claims. They also found that without visual aids, such as graphs and charts, the difficulty in communicating these ideas increased exponentially. These valuable understandings of what wasn’t working in the science research lessons provided educators with specific modifications they could make in their lessons to make student learning more effective.
What did they learn about implementing Lesson Study?
The structure of their school is not very supportive of lesson study which has forced them to start their meetings during the summer. They found they cast too wide a net when it came to getting the research groups started and think that scaling down the research lessons will improve the speed in which they can be implemented.
How can you make this work at your school?
Research and texts on lesson study are not hard to come by. The biggest challenge you can face is that your school does not have the time or resources to implement the necessary bits and pieces at study inception, however, once the process gets going the road gets easier as the work invested makes future studies easier. Bottom line? Lesson study works. Make it work for you.
Learn more about Lesson Study
- What is lesson study?
- A deeper look at lesson study
- Challenges to Importing Japanese Lesson Study: Concerns, Misconceptions, and Nuances
- Lesson study (Wikipedia)
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2015-2016 Application Now Available
Here’s to another year of enriching and inspiring both learners and educators!
Applications are now being accepted on our website for this year’s application period (January 15 – April 15, 2015).
Please apply early as the number of applications which may be submitted is limited to the numbers below.
- 175 Academic Enrichment applications (preview Academic Enrichment Grant Application Questions)
- 75 Teacher Development applications (preview Teacher Development Grant Application Questions)
- 50 Scholarship applications (preview Student Teaching Scholarship/Mentoring Application)
You can learn more about McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation’s 2014-2015 Grant Recipients here.
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Teacher Collaboration Creates Real World Learning and Assessment at San Francisco Community School
Collaborative Planning for Project Based Learning
Teaching, despite being surrounded by literally hundreds of human beings on a daily basis, can be a very isolating profession. An educator could be likened to being a single island in an archipelago. While they are a part of an entity larger than themselves the vast gulfs that separate them keep them from fully benefitting from each other’s resources. Coupled with the daily slog through textbooks, homework, and testing, it’s easy to see how a teacher’s passion for education could wane. Is collaboration with other teachers a way to improve teaching and learning? The educators at San Francisco Community School (SFC) proposed exactly that in the Collaborative Planning for Project Based Learning project funded by McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation.
What exactly is Project Based Learning (PBL)?
According to the Buck Institute for Education PBL is “a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, problem, or challenge.” You can learn more about types of PBL from John Larmer at Edutopia. Put more simply, it’s learning by doing. PBL is a model that shifts its focus away from a teacher-centric approach and emphasizes student directed assignments. With a focus on relevant assessment and real world relevance, PBL is a very exciting alternative for both students and teachers to traditional classroom learning.
What are the benefits of PBL for teachers and students?
According to the National Education Administration, PBL “makes learning relevant to students by establishing connections to life outside the classroom and addressing real world issues. In the classroom PBL gives teachers an opportunity to build relationships with students by acting as their coach, facilitator, and co-learner.” In the past few years the increased access to technology in schools, even underprivileged ones like SFC, makes this type of learning much more accessible. The large format of the projects also lend themselves to being easily shared between teachers and with parents who are invested in the student’s learning process.
How are the educators at SFC implementing PBL?
It’s not an easy approach, especially if you have limited resources and time. According to the original proposal by Jessica Fishman, who is spearheading the project, “The Collaborative Planning Project (CPP) will allow SFC teachers to work together for three days in summer study groups to establish essential learning objectives, develop long-term project-based curriculum and develop common learning strategies for the coming year.”
The teachers used the text Understanding by Design by Wiggins & McTighe as their guide as they work through the ideas of backwards design and the building blocks of project based learning. The teachers were also be divided into groups based on grade ranges so that, when sharing, they could manage and engage each others needs and expectations as students moved through the school. This collaboration will create essential bridges between educators so that ideas and proposals may flow more easily between them.
After two years of implementation, where are they now?
Jessica Fishman was happy to report that the project met or exceeded all the goals they had set.
According to the proposal the goals were as follows:
- Project-based learning methods to support student learning in real-world, meaningful challenge-driven projects.
- Teachers will identify and develop performance-based assessment opportunities and rubrics that are aligned to the projects and indicate the extent to which students have mastered the essential learning outcomes.
- Culturally-relevant instructional strategies designed to engage and support students who are traditionally under-served by public schools.
- Vertical alignment and calibration of expectation and rigor K-8.
Student projects about volcanic eruptions.
By working in their individual grade level groups the teachers created concrete plans for their fall cycle. Not only did they create a solid collaboration plan, they created a set of assessments along with K-8 vertical integration and alignment. The problem they’ve run into both years was that very few teams had time to do initial planning. As a result, many teams were forced to meet again over winter break to finish their planning for the spring. The extra time spent in each others company only strengthened the personal and professional bonds between their educators. Now, with the project plans in place, it’s a much smoother transition for new teachers joining the project.
When teachers are able to truly collaborate it opens up worlds of opportunities, not only for the students, but for the educators as well. There is no reason to cease learning, especially when one is a teacher. The benefits of project based learning are clear, but the added collaboration between educators will only amplify that effect.
Further Reading
- Research Spotlight on Project-Based Learning
- What is Project Based Learning (PBL)?
- PBL – Problem Based Learning
- The Challenge of Problem Based Learning
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Lesson Study: Improving Science at Willow Field Elementary School
One of the biggest factors in positively impacting student learning is teacher’s self efficacy and skill in communicating quality instruction. If you aren’t a natural communicator, this isn’t the easiest skill set to develop. With an increased emphasis placed on ELA (English Language Arts) and mathematics instruction at the elementary level, science instruction seems to have fallen through the cracks. The teachers at Willow Field Elementary in Liverpool, NY have developed a proposal to address that very issue. How do they plan on doing this? Through “Lesson Study.”
What is lesson study?
It’s also known as kenkyu jugyo in Japan, where the technique was developed. It’s focus is on teacher collaboration to discuss learning goals and planning actual classroom lessons. This is followed by observation and revision so that other teachers can benefit from it. According to their original proposal, a lesson study cycle begins with a team of educators who determine the content on which they want to focus for the purpose of preparing a research lesson. In this case, it is with a focus on science education, though the model can be adapted to fit any subject.
How does the project work?
The project team meets regularly to study and discuss the national, state and local standards and reviews educational research regarding the content. In Willow Field Elementary’s case, they’ve been studying the new National Framework for Science Teaching, recent journal articles from the field of elementary science education and consulting with the Department of Science Teaching at Syracuse University to become more knowledgeable in elementary science content and teaching practices. Using what they’ve learned, they will collaboratively write a lesson plan, which will be taught to a group of students while at the same time having the lesson video taped for further discussion. All of this is done with the end goal of improving instruction. How specifically? By starting to teach more science than in the past, teachers gain comfort and improve teaching effectiveness. When combined with studying the national framework, research literature, and the data they have collected about student’s learning process and outcomes, teachers can more easily pass on what they have learned to other professionals.
What did the teachers study?
Three questions, specifically, are guiding teacher learning in this project.
- How do we design science instruction that makes students’ thinking visible?
- How can we meet our students’ needs and simultaneously address the new science framework?
- How will evidence of students’ learning be used to help us revise our original lesson?
How did they find the time?
Because lesson study requires teachers have time to plan, observe and reflect with each other, scheduling is difficult. With the logistical challenges inherent in this model, they have certainly faced an uphill battle. Gearing up in August was required; team members needed time to plan. The project went into full swing of September 2012 with nine elementary school teachers and a building principal meeting a Syracuse University doctoral student and science education professor to discuss the overview of the Lesson Study process to those new to the method. Shortly after, they met to determine their over all research focus.
Their goals:
- Students will be problem-solvers.
- Students will be inventive, creative and curious.
- Students will be risk-takers.
To help focus their efforts, teachers broke into three smaller teams, each dedicated to a grade and content specific focus.
- 2nd Grade Science- Understanding the Specifics Matter (two second grade teachers, doctoral student)
- 4th/5th Grade Science- The Force of Magnetism (two 4th Grade and one 5th Grade teacher)
- 6th Grade Art – Observational Drawing to Support Sketching in Science Notebooks (two Art teachers, one 6th Grade and one 3rd Grade teacher)
Once the teams were in motion, they could follow the traditional model for the next semester. So after a year and a half of the program, how is lesson study impacting the students and teachers of Willow Field Elementary?
Impacting teachers, students, and administrators
With time, support and resources for lesson study, what were the teachers of Willow Field Elementary able to achieve?
- Teacher participants gained further pedagogical content knowledge with regard to science content knowledge, observational drawing and uses in science and, constructivist methods of teaching elementary science (versus direct instruction)
- Teacher participants expressed increased self-efficacy and confidence
- Students gained experience collecting data
- Students benefited from the many revisions to the lesson during the lesson study cycle
- Students engaged in authentic scientific experimentation
- Students gained content knowledge
- Students who volunteered on the Professional Development Day had the benefit of seeing their teachers as learners. They also experienced pride in playing a role in their teachers’ professional development.
In their project update, members wrote “Our lesson study team garnered increased support from the district administrators.” Seeing the model in action “allowed them to recognize the benefits of lesson study as an authentic model of professional development.”
How could the project be improved?
With all of the positive outcomes, members reflected on ways to improve on their experience. They found it especially challenging to differentiate lesson study for the experienced and novice participants, though in future iterations this problem may simply solve itself through teacher collaboration. Scheduling and logistics, as always, was a nightmare. But the biggest problem they faced was that the current school structures do not support lesson study mechanisms. In order to widely adopt this model for nationwide consumption, a massive overhaul of our education system would be needed. However, for the individual school this method can prove invaluable in improving teaching and communication skills thus facilitating improved learning.
Further Reading
- Lesson Study: How Can It Build System-Wide Improvement? (Lewis, 2008)
- What is Lesson Study? (Teacher’s College, Columbia University, Undated)
- Lesson Study (Wikipedia, 2012)
- A Mathematics Leader’s Guide to Lesson Study in Practice (EDC, 2010)
- Chicago Lesson Study Group (McDougal, 2011)
Schools in the News using Lesson Study
- ‘Lesson Study,’ Japanese Strategy for Improving Teachers, Catching on in US (Lutton, 2012)
- Sherwood Middle Schools pilot collaborative Lesson Study, taken from Japan (Hammill, 2014)
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Project Go! Lab Classrooms offer job-embedded professional development
One of the problems facing educators today is the lack of time for personal and professional development. With overcrowded classrooms and heavy course loads it has become very difficult for many teachers to hone their craft or improve their teaching skills. This is a problem the teachers surrounding Project Go! at Rowe Middle School in Portland, Oregon are trying to address. Their strategy? Take a proactive approach to change, by improving and sharing their teaching craft through lab classrooms. Project Go! involves an ongoing series of lab classes, opening classroom doors to coaching in the midst of teaching. With classes often at capacity and teachers being forced to take their own, limited, time for professional development this project takes bold steps toward teacher development.
How does it work?
The first step Project Go! has taken to ensure teachers and educators have the time for professional development is to write half day substitutes into the budget. That way a teacher isn’t required to come in on an evening or weekend and they can rest assured that some one is teaching their students. With this half day, the teachers are given the opportunity to participate in teaching labs. Teachers participate in a preliminary meeting, lab site learning and debrief. With teachers being given opportunities to participate in these half-day labs, Project Go! supports their goal that “every educator engages in effective professional learning everyday so every student achieves.” Instructional practices, behavior management techniques, and pacing are all things to be discussed and deconstructed for the benefit of the educator. When paired with ongoing assessments, the teachers quickly find themselves with more education resources at their fingertips.
Teachers need learning structures that empower them professionally and enable them to collaborate with colleagues. (2010, ASCD)
So what do these labs look like?
Each lab takes a half day: an hour for a pre-briefing/discussion of what will be seen, the actual teaching, and the debrief to name and discuss what was seen, analyze the teacher choices and the student engagement. This model integrates the professional learning along with the learning of their students who will be gleaning the direct benefits of their teacher’s professional development. Not only that, the students will get to observe the review process where the teachers discuss with each other on their progress as teachers, and at the same time giving the students a better understanding of the tools and methods that will be utilized in the future.
How is this program unique from other professional development or peer review proposals?
Project Go! supports the newest teachers in the profession, setting the environment of a school in which doors are open, risks are taken, feedback is honest and immediate change is an ongoing reality. Mid-career teachers, who have often gotten used to being the only adult in the room, will find it energizing, intellectually stimulating and welcoming to either share their practice or participate by watching and dialoguing about a colleagues craft. Veteran teachers are equally invited into an invigorating opportunity for growth; many veteran teachers have so much to teach our newer teachers but have no means in which to do so. By facilitating the purposeful opening of the teaching practice Project Go! provides a time and place for teachers to participate without hamstringing them by adding extra workload.
What has been learned in the three years this project has been operating?
According to their report, the program has had a significant affect on teacher learning and therefore on student learning.
“We are changing the way we provide professional development for teachers by making sure the work is being done in real classrooms, with real students, and in real time. This models the metacognitive processes that teachers go through as they plan, teach, and reflect. A pleasant and meaningful surprise that has manifested itself throughout the past three years has been our students observing and learning from our metacognition. Students share how much they learn from listening to the teachers dialogue with one another. They give us insight into what is helpful/not helpful in the process of teaching new information.”
That being said, they have not been without their challenges. Scheduling labs around different teachers classroom schedules has proven more difficult than anticipated. The educators also have some worry over the sustainability of the project, due to the sub coverage. This lead them to reach out to Portland State University and form a partnership with the goal of identifying new strategies for sustaining this model. Though new strategies will take time to implement, teachers are encouraged by the practice of learning from colleagues in action.
All in all the teachers of Rowe Middle School have taken a very proactive approach to improving their craft and educational standards. Through collaboration and evaluation, these teachers have seen improvements in both their educator peers and students. With budgets growing ever tighter, this may be a difficult model for other schools to follow, but the rewards are clear. Any school wanting to create an environment of professional cross-pollination, where teachers are working with teachers and students gain the benefit should look into building a Project Go! of their own.
Related links
- Demonstrating Teaching in a Lab Classroom (2010, ASCD)
- Laboratory Classrooms – Frequently Asked Questions (2011, EBCERI)
- Learning by Observing Colleagues in Action (2006, Responsive Classrooms)
