PLC At Work Institute: Day 3

Day 3 of the PLC At Work Institute was all about Mike Mattos for me. I have SO much swimming around inside my head from what he had to say that I am going to write a blog very soon just about RTI.

Instead of tackling RTI today, I would like to reflect about the PLC process in general.  I've purposely reserved any blog posts about professional learning communities until I had a chance to take it all in and let the concepts marinate inside my head for a bit.

PLC's can be a complicated issue within school districts and schools.  People seem to have caught on that PLC's work to improve learning, but the implementation isn't always effective.  Unfortunately, I think that leaves many educators really confused as to what they are supposed to be doing.  PLC's end up seeming like another meeting that you have to go to and more acronyms you have to learn. Tim Brown said it best. "PLC's should not be one more thing you are adding to your plate.  Instead, they should simply be the way we operate."  Professional learning communities should be a way we go about teaching that allows for high levels of learning. Period. 

For me, one of the major downfalls of most PLC's that I've been a part of is that no one seemed to have the roadmap as to what we were supposed to be doing.  Let's be honest.  We're process people.  We math teachers enjoy our steps, and when we know the process, we can get anything done.  So here are the "Steps to actually doing this PLC thing people have been talking about so that our students will actually get something out of it" according to one math teacher who has done a couple PLC's and attended the PLC Institute. Catchy title, huh?  Keep in mind that all of this is done is cooperation with your team of teachers that also teach the same subject/grade level.

Step 1:  Know what you are supposed to teach.  This seems so obvious, and yet not everyone knows exactly where their content should start and where it should stop.  Identifying this and making for sure that everyone is on the same page is critical.

Step 2: Figure out which concepts your students absolutely have to know to be successful the next year.  Basically, we have to pick our "hills to die on".  Which concepts are so important that without them our students are doomed to fail the next grade?  These concepts are your essential standards. 

Step 3: Decide what order you are going to teach your standards, and how long you are going to teach each standard.  When doing this, keep in mind the essential standards?  These are the standards we should be spending the majority of our time teaching. All of the teachers on the team need to be in agreement and teach the standards in the same order to allow the next steps of the process to work.

Step 4: When you are beginning a unit on an essential standard, set a goal as a team for what you expect to accomplish during your initial teaching of the subject.

Step 5: Create a common assessment that measures students understanding of the essential standard.

Step 6: Teach. Every teacher teaches the concept in whatever way they choose within the timeframe given.

Step 7: Give all of the students the common assessment.  It's important to be sure that each teacher is giving the assessment in the same way.  Otherwise, data becomes invalid.

Step 8: Sit down with your team and analyze the data.  Look for strengths and weaknesses in teaching practice.  The goal of this is not to figure out whose "best" and look down on the "failures".  The point of this conversation is to unite together to decide which strategies are going to best fit the needs of the students you have so that every child can learn the concept.

Step 9: Intervention and Extension.  Refer those students who need help to whatever RTI is available and allow those who showed proficiency to demonstrate their knowledge with a task-based application of the content learned.  This is going to look different depending on how your school has their RTI program set up.  However, it can be as simple as one teacher taking those students needing help and providing re-teaching, and another teacher taking those students who have reached proficiency.

Step 10:  Reassess those students who were given interventions to see if they now have an understanding of the concept.  Without this step, the team has no way of determining if what they are doing in the intervention is working or not.

Once this process is completed, the team starts over at step 4 with the next standard being taught.  It becomes a continuous cycle of learning and improvement for the students and for the teachers. Teams that are functioning well can truly support each other and ALL students to reach our ultimate goal: learning!

Professional Learning Communities Flow Chart

PLC At Work Institute Day 2

 

Yesterday I was convicted of my reliance on good. Today, I reflected on ways we as educators convict our students. What is the excuse that you use when your students don't learn?  I'll give you a minute to think that one over.

 

The answer to that question could be different for everyone.  There are those that will sit on a really high horse and exclaim that they would NEVER make excuses.  To be quite candid, they're lying.  Everyone has done it.  We have all had students struggle or fail and immediately felt defensive.  The excuses are those things that fly out of our mouths in that weak moment when we are trying to protect ourselves.

 

EFFORT

 

For me, this is the number one math teacher excuse that I hear and have uttered myself.  It isn't exclusive to the math world by any means, but we sometimes sing this excuse in round at the top of our lungs. Because everyone MUST hear it. 

 

"If these kids would just do their work..."

"My students are so lazy."

"They don't want to learn."

"They don't even try."

 

The list goes on and on, and every statement points a finger directly back at the student and screams, "It's all your fault because I was doing my job."  It isn't pretty.  They aren't our proudest moments. It's reality though. We have all done it because it's easier to point the finger away from us than to confront the fact that we may need to change.

 

I've searched all my years of teaching, but I have never found the magic wand that makes every kid come into my classroom loving math and excited to work hard at thinking mathematically.  They don't come with a "try harder" button that we can excitedly press every time the students want to give up.  And I can tell a student a million times to "just try", but that doesn't guarantee a change in behavior.

 

So, what can I do?  I can't force any student to want to work really hard just by telling them they should do it.  The only thing I can control is myself.  Me.  The teacher in the classroom. Not the students. Or the principal. Or the district. Just ME.

 

While sitting in a session today, I was speaking with a math teacher from California. We were discussing Timothy Kanold's presentation of research showing that students must be praised for working hard instead of for being "smart".  The idea is that we should not be praising students for something they feel is fixed and cannot change. Students think they are either smart or they're not.  Therefore, success and praise isn't linked to doing anything, but rather it's linked to innate ability.  As educators, we know this assumption is false, but we need to communicate that to our students by giving praise and rewards when students really put in authentic effort towards learning.

 

Back to my Californian colleague. In a very mild mannered voice, he made a statement that should be common sense and yet gets completely overlooked in many classrooms and schools today.  He simply said, "We need to talk to them and show them what good effort actually looks like. Here's what I do to model good effort in my classroom." 

 

Wow! How simple, but how powerful is that reminder?  If we want students to work hard, we need to be willing to show them what that looks like and then hold them to that standard.  Good effort isn't writing an answer on a page. It isn't copying procedures.  Good effort is being able to show our mathematical processes and communicate to others what we did and why it makes sense.

 

Show them, and let them show me. Put in the effort.  After all, it's a two way street.

PLC At Work Institute: Day 1

 First thing this morning, I was assaulted.  Before I get a million e-mails and concerned phone calls checking on my well-being, I should clarify.  Have you ever had one of those moments where someone said something that completely caught you off guard and made you stop everything in its tracks, so you could ponder what they just said?  It happened to me this morning.  I was assaulted by a quote.  It snuck up behind me and caught me completely off guard.

"Good is the enemy of great." -Collins, 2001.

I'm guessing you weren't expecting something so simple. And yet, one slide into his presentation, Jack Baldermann made me stop and take stock of how those words apply to me in my professional life. Everything about those six simple words convicts me. I'm certain that it convicts many other educators out there as well. How many times have we used "good" as an excuse?

"I'm good at what I do."
"I get good results."
"It's good enough"

There are so many other "goods" out there.  The truth is that these "goods" are what hold us back as educators from being great.  We fall back on "good" instead of saying "I need to be great."  Let's be honest.  Don't our students deserve great?  Would we want our own children in the classrooms of teachers that strive for "good"?  Think about it.  Should we be walking around and saying, "It's okay. That teacher tried really hard to be good"?

 I would contend that as educators we should be appalled with this practice.  When did "good" become the end goal of education?  We should be striving to be great. And, no... I don't mean we should strive for great test scores. I mean we should really dig down deep and do what is best for kids. We are charged with helping and guiding them so that they LEARN.  So, shouldn't that be our benchmark?  Shouldn't we be asking, "What should they learn?" and "How can I make for sure they ALL learn it?"  Can't we change our dialogue from "I'm good at what I do" into "I'm good, but what can I do to make myself great and how can you help me get there?"  If we aren't capable of making that shift in our thinking, then we will always be "good" and never get to the GREAT our students deserve!

Pardon the technical difficulties...

Technology having issues? Never!

The wifi on the charter wasn't working yesterday so my post didn't struggle through and make it to the internet until today. 

I'm HERE! Ready to collaborate , learn, and make myself better! More to come...

On the road...

I would say "again" and force all of you to silently sing a rather well known country song in your head. However, it doesn't really fit the situation so I'll spare you the tune. I just boarded a charter bus and am on my way to St. Charles, MO. Why? Two words. Professional Development. I (and around 80 other educators) am on my way to the national conference, PLC at Work. And while a few friends have questioned my sanity, I am really excited! I love how conferences help me to examine my own best practices and re-think my classroom and instruction. So, over the course of the conference, I plan to put that reflection here. I need to mostly for my own benefit so that I can always refer back to it... Even when teenagers aren't so wonderful and I'm buried under a mountain of stress. 

Welcome!

Welcome to my own little spot on the great big world wide web! 

I'm a high school math teacher working every day to make myself a better educator. I'm extremely excited to begin this new adventure in blogging.  I'm the type of teacher that is constantly reflecting and changing what I do in an attempt to make my instruction the most engaging and effective for my students.

I hope you take some time to get to know a little bit more about me and come back often to follow me on this brand new journey!