Adaptive Schools

Tracey and Mariela on experience with leading and guiding collaborative groups within both SLC and PLC work:

Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry in Engaging Collaborative Practice

Tracey has been transferring knowledge from her experience with SLC leadership through Adaptive Schools at Wilson to support the school-wide transition to PLC formation at La Canada. The feedback from colleagues on how learning about the Seven Norms and Group Member Capabilities reflects that the structures have positively affected professional practice and changed the collegial climate. Observers from a WASC evaluation team that visited in the spring also noted a culture of teamwork. Next steps for LCHS and LCUSD in terms of PLC work include the continued integration of collaborative tools & structures into staff professional development.

Creating Efficacy Through Collaboration in PLCs and SLCs

The training that Mariela has received in Adaptive Schools has been invaluable in her role as a facilitator in leading a PLC and SLC. The training has provided a focused way of organizing instruction and collaboration. By structuring the agenda in a manner where not only content is shown, but also the tools/strategies that will be used, participants come in knowing that the meeting will be productive and effective. The particular PLC she works with (Humanities/Geography) hasn't had the opportunity to meet often because there is much work to get done in departments, so when creating any agenda, it takes her a lot of time to look through what specific strategies are best to make the most out of their time. Matching the right strategy to the purpose and outcome can take a long time, but as her repertoire and "tool box" increased, it has become easier. Other than creating structure in meetings, these strategies create a system of accountability because all of them involve the participation of everyone attending. This can present a bit of a challenge with keeping 15-20 faculty members in a productive and cohesive mindset. Nevertheless, teachers not only walk away with a sense of accomplishment, they also take away new strategies to use in their classrooms!  

Here are sample agendas utilized during a professional development for the different groups that Mariela has worked with over the past two years: 

Geography/Humanities PLC

SLC PD

SLC Common Planning Time

Cognitive Coaching

Mylene has received overwhelming feedback from the participants of the Cognitive Coaching Foundations seminars about their increased efficacy to positively impact teacher reflection and growth. At ESC East, the leadership has been more explicit about using the pattern of PPP to pause, paraphrase, and pose a question with principals and teachers. Mylene will be co-training again during the 2013-2014 school year with newly hired Access to Core coaches, Special Education teachers, and district-level administrators.

Curriculum Development

Samira's experience with collaborative curriculum development within both SLC and department work:

Building Thematic Inquiry in the Small Learning Community (SLC)

As part of a small learning community, we meet weekly during our common planning time to focus on the goals of our program. We often work in small committees to maximize our efforts to cover our specific needs. As a member of the Instruction and Curriculum Committee, I work with my colleagues to design and develop thematic lessons that can be used within the academy. Our current focus has been on the instruction used for our FAS classes (Family Advocacy System). Almost every teacher has a FAS class that is made up of a specific grade level and generally consists of 15 to 20 students. We plan to continue to create FAS lessons that build upon our theme to help further develop our group identity. Additionally, we want to move this work forward by developing interdisciplinary lessons that integrate two or three different content areas. Interdisciplinary teaching is a critical way to support thematic instruction because it allows students to see how a concept can be transferred and viewed through multiple lenses.  Click here to view a sample FAS lesson plan for the Academy of Fine Arts.

Developing Collaborative Curriculum in Departments

As a member of my school’s art department, we meet frequently during professional development to plan common units and assessments. However, since we each teach a different art media (i.e. ceramics, painting, animation, design, etc), it has often been a challenge to develop a singular unit or assessment that could easily fit each of our specific needs. Considering a specific theme, such as identity or social change, has allowed us to expand our approach to developing common units. We can all use the same theme with some of the same strategies for our students’ inquiry yet still have the culminating task vary depending on the specific media. This has also allowed us to collaborate more effectively with the music teacher in our department as he is currently the only music teacher in our school. We have also explored developing the career-pathway focus by developing a common assessment in which students take on the role of an art/music critic by viewing/listening to a specific piece and then writing a review based on a series of questions. This common writing assessment allows students to not only identify what they see/hear, but to further analyze the piece using higher and more complex questioning.

Technology

As a team, we purchased four iPad2 3G-enabled devices with connectors (dongles) for LCD projectors. At the CUE conference and on our own we researched various applications and resources to support classroom practice. We maintained documents on DocstoGo, Dropbox, Edmodo, and Noteability. Choosing the right application for each task required some trial and error, but ultimately we found the programs and applications that best suited our needs and resources. We began to use the iPads as a necessary means for staying in touch with one another after we moved to different locations. Our iPads have increased our ability to do portable presentations in our classrooms, professional development, access web-based resources such as My Big Campus and Dropbox for team, SLC, and PLC collaboration, and record our learning, as we are doing in this online portfolio. At our annual TIIP meeting in April 2013, we shared a Power Point presentation (below) that highlighted our progress and process.

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What are you learning about Professionals Learning in Communities?
2. What are you noticing about teams with which you work?
3. What might be some implications of this section of our project for classroom practices?