Cycle Three: Schools as "Embryonic Communities"

Several years ago our district began on the Professional Learning Community journey.  While this journey started as a 9^th grade transition intervention it soon bloomed into a district wide initiative that is now just part of the “way we do things around here” philosophy.  In an effort to reduce 9^th grade failure rates we began a system of breaking the 9^th graders down into smaller teams that all shared a common set of teachers who met 3 times a week to discuss curriculum, analyze data and conference with students and parents.  The success of the PLC model reduced the 9^th grade failure rate from 35% to now less than 5%, with a 0% failure rate still being the goal.  Soon the PLC model would extend beyond what we call 9^th grade teaming so that every teacher was a member of a PLC with time to meet built into the school day.  Becoming a PLC school is not something that happens overnight.  There has to be a large culture shift within a school.  Teams have to establish norms and protocols, and teachers have to learn how to function as a collaborative group.  Teachers are used to having a closed door policy.  Many educators have the attitude that “this is my classroom, I do what I want, I teach my curriculum and this is my data” and to function as a PLC school an individual or groups of individuals cannot have this attitude.  On the website All Things PLC there are many great articles about PLC’s, how to start PLCs, change the culture and how PLC’s are successful.  PLC’s don’t just have to be within one district they can be between schools districts.  Upon the success of PLC’s within our own district, a regional PLC began between 5 schools and their biology departments.  The biology teachers from 5 schools would meet and study the Iowa Common Core against our own curriculum, exchange ideas and resources and analyze test data.  We were a regional PLC. 

I think the part about PLC’s that directly influenced success rates, is that we were looking at the students as individuals and trying to ensure the success of each individual student.  With a team of teachers watching over a smaller group of 9^th graders we were able to see issues with individual students earlier on and intervene.  We were more focused on the success of each student rather than just class averages.  One example is South Elementary School in Missouri which has also found success with PLC’s. The same things that derived from PLC’s in South Elementary happened in our school as well.  Our focus became about the learning, not the teaching.  As South Elementary discovered “In a PLC school, teachers work together by writing common assessments, planning curriculum, and sharing teaching duties. Teachers often refer to students as “our” students instead of “my” students, reinforcing the collective atmosphere. Teachers work together to identify at-risk students, and teams problem-solve to intervene for each student. “   

A PLC can then lead to the undoing of the “factory system school” as Dewey calls it.  On our journey as a PLC school this is where I see my classroom and our district at now.  Through our PLC system we have taken the focus off the classroom as a whole and put the focus on each individual student.  As Dewey points out in his book, The School and Society, schools will only be successful “by being true to the growth of all individuals”.  PLC’s help by focusing on the growth of each individual student.  As schools go deeper into the PLC process they will discover that the teacher and student need to be a partner in the learning process.  In Dewey’s book The Child and the Curriculum he promotes “an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student”.  Through PLC work teachers begin to look at students as individuals and how to make each one successful.  Teachers believe that if they can function as a community of teachers than their classrooms can function as a community as well.  Now if we can fertilize the communities with a little technology this whole concept of “embryonic communities” begins to really take shape.  When I think about Dewey, I think he would have loved the concept of Wikipedia and Google and 1:1 initiatives in schools.  As a teacher, if I can stop being the vessel of all knowledge then there is more time to be attentive to each students interests and needs.  I can begin to differentiate instruction based on students’ interests and academic level and I can help my students to build a community culture.  This is where technology and the flipped classroom allow for the classroom Dewey, and I, envision.    

In the article, Building Community in Schools, it is written that, "People are bonded to each other as a result of their mutual bindings to shared values, traditions, ideas, and ideals" and “that we might better understand, design, and run schools as social rather than formal organizations and, in particular, as communities”.  When I think of my classroom I want it to be a community with an attitude of, “All for One and One for All”.  A place where it is acceptable to fail if you try again until you succeed, where we value our individual interests and learn from each other, where the goal is learning and we will all help each other to learn.   At the high school level this is difficult because they are part of the “factory system” and we are trying to change the factory when they are only a couple years from exiting.  As students experience the culture at a younger age it will be easier to continue that culture at the secondary level.   Good school reform is finally here.  While Dewey’s book is from the early 1900’s he had ideas that were never implemented the way they should have been and his ideas are exactly what needs to be happen to education in the year 2012 and beyond.  Sometimes I think things weren’t implemented or changed because teachers are not trusted, but if a schools begins with PLC’s, builds a collaborative culture for teachers, allows teachers to be leaders, the snowball effect will be school reform that ends the “factory system” of education and finally creates schools that resemble real life.  

Resources:

Culture Making - One of the major things that has to happen to create a community in schools is to change culture.  Culture change can be very difficult and can not just come from administrators but from colleagues.  

Changing the Culture of Schools - In this article it talks about how PLC's can bring about the necessary culture change.

All Things PLC - Everything there is to know about PLC's

Coalition for Community Schools - Great FAQ about community schools

Cyle two: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

Differentiated instruction by Wikipedia definition means “providing students with different avenues to acquiring content” and “and to developing teaching materials so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability.”  For me differentiated instruction always meant special education and how we could water down the curriculum for special education students so they could pass.  I went through several years with special education teachers that thought this was the best way to include them in the classroom and was to water down the curriculum and make it as easy as possible for students to pass – teachers even going as far as giving them the answers so they could pass.  What I know now is that differentiated instruction is about ALL students. 

In the article we read by Fran Schumer, One Classroom, Many Minds: A Paddle for the Mainstream, Ms. Caggiano’s class is my ideal classroom.  There used to be a belief that all students had to be doing the same thing at the same time in order to be learning.  If they all didn’t do the same project or the same worksheet then it wasn’t “fair” and they wouldn’t be learning.  What Ms. Caggiano’s classroom showed is that having kids doing different activities, structured to their learning and ability is a more effective method of instructing.  As a teacher it would be much simpler to teach and instruct to everyone the same lesson but not everyone has the same ability level or learns the same way.  In the article by Schumer she says the instead of asking “What am I supposed to teach now” ask “What does the student need to learn next and what is the most effective way for me to teach it?”  The one size fits all approach to education does not allow us to meet the needs of all students anymore. In fact in many schools the one size fits all approach doesn’t even reach the majority as the population has changed.  But then did the one size fits all approach ever work?  On the outside it may have appeared to, but even the students who we thought were learning were probably just playing the game of school.  They knew how to jump through the hoops, give the teacher what they wanted and get an A, but looking back on it were they really learning? 

By employing the use of technology we can truly differentiate and develop a community.  By employing a flipped class (where students listen to lectures and videos outside of class as homework) the in class activities can be tailored to learning styles and abilities and students can receive more one on one assistance.  With the use of technology students can then be working on all different projects and assignments.  In an elementary classroom if a students in struggling with a math concept they may be playing math games to help improve a skill while someone else might be making a video show me of the math concept for other students.  At the high school level students can group together according to interests.  For instance in science class there might a group who wants to make a video about a topic while another group wants to record a song about it.  Students can group together according to their interests and then bond together over those interests.  As a teacher instead of giving the standard class project and everyone makes a poster or a power point.  Students now have the power to choose what their finished product will look like, thanks to technology.  Technology can have a major impact on a teachers ability to differentiate instruction.  This article in eSchoolNews provides further information and ideas. 

Last year I flipped my biology classes and found this method to really be effective.  I have my own channel on iTunes where students can listen to my lectures and then we work on things in class together.  Since I am working more one on one students I get a true picture of students abilities and using more formative assessment I can see who needs what activities and how to group them according to ability.  Formative assessment is key to differentiating instruction on a daily basis in the classroom. In two articles one by Holli Levy and the other by Rick Stiggins they explain the need for formative assessment to differentiate instruction.  Some of my favorite formative assessment tools are Google Surveys, exit tickets and My Favorite No’s.  I also find technology very useful for collaboration.  Students can create projects together and work on them jointly using Wiki’s and cloud computing like shared documents on Google. 

Differentiated instruction is no longer the four letter word it used to be for me.  What it really means as that I am looking at the individual needs and abilities of each learner and adapting instruction for each learner to meet their needs.  Be using technology and formative assessment I can differentiate instruction for everyone.  I can stretch the learning of the highest achieving and remediate for the lowest ability all in the same classroom.  With technology I can also group students by interests and differentiate even larger projects and assignments and student can easily work together on shared documents and assignments.  While I am just venturing on my flipped classroom journey and differentiating more and more I can envision my classroom and the community I want it to be. 

Resources:

Differentiated Instruction - Resource for all things differentiated instruction.  Great graphic about what is differentiated instruction.

Jacque Melin - Professor at Grand Valley State University.  Series of power points on differentiated instruction and formative assessment.

Flipped Classroom - Infogrpahic that describes a flipped classroom.

Webster City Biology Podcasts - Channel on iTunes for my biology podcasts.

Cycle One:Interpretations and the Meaning and Causes of Failure

Failure is something that the institution of public education has made into a four letter F word.  If we think back to our early years as children and when we would play games or build things with Legos failure was not an option.  I have three sisters and when we would play games as children and one of us would lose what did we always wants to do....play again so we could attempt again to win and be successful.  I would rethink my strategy and try a new way of playing in an attempt to be successful the second time we played.  Imagine a simple game of tic-tac-toe, does anyone play one game and stop?  No, if at first putting your X or O in a certain square doesn’t work you try again.  As I sit here writing this I am overlooking the lake I grew up on and I am reminded of when I learned to ski.  I was about 7 years old and getting up on water ski is not an easy task it requires many, many, many attempts.  Only after falling numerous times and getting back up and trying again was I successful.  Is this not the lesson we want to teach young people?  It’s acceptable to fail and make mistakes as long as you keep trying until you succeed this is a very important life lesson and piece of character.  What should not be acceptable is failure as the end result.  I am proud to say that at 38 years old I still can come here every summer and water ski.  So as children we fail and try again many, many times, so when does it become unacceptable to fail?  When children enter public schools.

While I believe elementary schools do a better job allowing failure and relearning, by the time a student gets to middle school or high school, where they start earning actual letter grades there develops a culture of teachers out to get students with those failing grades.  It becomes teachers against students and all students fear the dreaded F on a test, paper or report card.  The institution of public education becomes not about learning but about not failing and what drives students is their fear of failure.  What we need is schools that allow failure.  Schools that promote a culture that says it is acceptable to fail as long as you learn from it and try again until you succeed.

At Webster City High School (where I teach) we began implementing second chance testing two years ago.  If a student does not succeed at their first summative assessment attempt they can engage in re-learning and re-testing in order to be successful.  If a teachers end goal is student learning then we should never accept failure.  As a teacher I believe that all students are capable of learning.  It may take some students longer to learn it or they may need a different teaching strategy but I believe they are all capable of learning.  This has been a major culture shift for our students.  They are in high school now, they have been in a system that for years has taught them they get one chance to learn it, show they know it and if they don’t get it right the they fail.  Students were scared at first of failure, then students went through the next phase of attitude where if they get a second chance, why try the first time, and now at the end of year two they are finally catching on to what second chance testing and relearning is all about.  Think about education like a sport, take basketball.  Many players struggle with shooting free throws and in order to get better they practice and practice to increase their free throw shooting percentage.  Shaq O’Neil used to be one of the worse free throw shooters in the league and only through continuing practice did he increase his free throw percentage.  Should Shaq have never been allowed to practice and get better?  Some players are great at free throws and require little practice other needs more.  Should Shaq have never been allowed in the NBA because one part of his game was not adequate, yet?  Many students might be good in this subject or that subject and struggle in another – they just need time and practice in that area and an environment that allows them to fail and try again until they succeed.  Even the Washington State Patrol is offering second chances. Sometimes I even like to use failure to teach the class.  After doing some work with Cassie Erkens this spring about grading and assessment she asked me to watch a video called My Favorite No.  Upon watching the video I tried the routine in my classroom and it worked great.  I took an incorrect answer from a student (who remained nameless) and showed the common mistakes and how to do it correctly.  We learned from a mistake.  A great exercise in both it being acceptable to get it wrong, as long as you can correct and learn from it.  The idea is that we need to teach children it is ok to get it wrong just learned from and move on.  This is where perseverance and dedication come from.  Another example comes from the article What’s Right About Looking at What’s Wrong. 

            When I think about my life I have failed many, many times.  Probably more times than my parents would like.  My first marriage failed, I lost my home in a fire, I’ve wrecked a couple cars, I’ve tried teaching practices in my classroom that didn’t work, but I have never given up and I don’t consider myself a failure.  There is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that says “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” This is what I want to teach children so that they have the character to persevere through failures, overcome obstacles and have determination to succeed.  All of that is more important than any science fact I could teach them. 

Resources:
Webster City Schools Grading Reform
Minnesota Grading Practices