Ed Leadership Class

Notes from October 22, 2007

Norms Monitor for tonight:

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What’s Become Clear?

§ Art invited our honest feedback about the class now that we are more than halfway through the year.

§ Do Hoy and Miskel make anyone else feel depressed? How many of us feel that we are part of the “problem” schools?

§ NCLB rationale vs. implementation: processing can make big differences about how original intent is carried out

§ Progress at Ellis (the “smear” campaign)—Art’s take: when “minutia” gets in the way of learning and can be solved with little dent on resources, important to do it and to do it quickly so that the business of learning can continue as quickly as possible—Bring in the Port-a-Potties!

§ Pacing Guides design flaw—too many standards in too little time with no time built in for reteaching (Art will talk about effective collaboration around standards and pacing guides). Essential standards vs. All standards, can we build more time for strategic kids? Key is clarity and buy in (building synergy) when dealing with conflicts and problems at schools.

§ Vetting= taking the time to process and develop ownership of new changes

Video of teachers using system thinking in the getting of students to take control of their learning (PDSA—Plan, Do, Study, Act Cycle in K class) based on Langford’s book Tool Time for Education

§ Self evaluation charts in K from beginning of year

§ September-October: why important to do best quality work? A few students still dragging

§ Feb. learned PDSA tool from conference—how to measure student

§ Debated using Quick Fixes—take away privileges, punish, etc., but didn’t address goal of getting students to take ownership and pride of work

§ Use run chart to compare work they wanted to do vs. what they were actually doing –how many people did not give themselves a 5 over course of 7 assignments?

§ Led to “Aha” moment and opportunity lesson, lesson about different possible reactions to problem and possible consequences

§ Brain stormed what quality work is, then multi-voting (red = 1^st choice 3 points, blue=2^nd choice 2 points, tally mark=last choice 1 point)àmade class operational definition of Quality Work

§ Forced Feel Analysis (looking at both sides of a problem to see what makes it work and what makes it not work, helps students understand how to move from one to the other) = Why we do quality work and why we do not do quality work T-Chart

§ Discussion: Who holds the responsibility for quality work? Student, Teacher, Parent

§ Paired up and learned who would make a good “getting better buddy”.

§ Counted numbers of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s before pairing with “getting better buddies”

§ Graphed how did before and after getting better buddies

§ What did students learn? What helped them and how did it help?

§ Discussions and life lessons that happen because of the PDSA—important to look at yourself honestly, important in life to listen to other people’s ideas, sometimes important in life to stop and decide what’s important, sometimes important to stop and analyze own actions, we all have responsibilities—important to identify and live up to them

§ Guiding questions and using process tools in learning helped students take ownership of learning where trend in education is to take responsibility away from students with few tools to self-assess.

Discussion about video

§ Shows effective student use of rubrics with student involvement in higher level skills and processing

§ Time demand—sometimes time invested in processing pays off faster later on.

§ Importance of creating definition of quality work together

§ Instructional strategy—getting students to write about the steps of creating the chart and its results: need to get students to a higher cognitive level for any hope or chance of their remembering it in the long run

§ Bottom Line of Action Research = 5 WHYs: ask why again and again to deeper levels, (why do it? why not do it?) to build ownership

Chapter 8 ppt Review

§ NCLB “ramping up” of vision of accountability through gradually changing definitions of effectiveness

§ Accountability is a good thing, it’s in defining success that we run into conflict

§ What does Basic Skills? Essential skills to be successful at the next grade level? (HOW you teach determines level of cognitive engagement)

§ Accountability often lacks 2^nd component—assistance

§ Shift in defining school success from keeping students in school to reduce drop out rates through tracking (in the 60s and 70s) to academic accountability (in the 90s and 2000s)

§ Professional Development—one of the most lacking central pieces in most schools; should be deciding beforehand, what willing to implement, then working with teachers to develop skills and do it (instead of going to workshops and then decide what willing to implement)

§ Key is Commitment to making any program work (or fail)

§ County Offices are supposed to be PD providers and oversee budgets of different school districts—invented to do what school districts couldn’t afford to do, but becomes enabling agency for districts to farm out to County or private sector at cost of $50,000 per student

§ When school districts start dealing with students as business, we lose sight of the bigger more important goal of the student development

Saturday Class

§ Agenda for class will be emailed later this week

§ We will need a copy of our school plan

§ Need school data (from CDE)—API (weighted ranking based on CST scores and different proficiency bands) and AYP (success of subgroups based on whether they are proficient or not)

Journal Write

§ How does your school deal with accountability—how are inputs impacting your accountability? Do they impact your school’s outputs? How is your school dealing with it?

Collaboration—A Teacher Empowerment Model (ppt. presentation)

§ Way to facilitate the PDSA cycle among colleagues

§ Goal= to accelerate achievement and widen student engagement

§ Major steps: Align instruction to essential standards (critical skills to move to next grade level and for CSTs), evaluate strategies, use common assessments to inform instruction, take actionable steps

§ Pacing Guides—without conversations and planning among teachers, only have a piece of paper, not a plan

§ Response to Intervention through collaboration between teachers and SPED teams is a tough but doable model of meeting students’ needs so that fewer students get labeled an put into special education system

§ Create synergy through collaborative empowerment