Thinking Collaborative 

During our grant period, a new organization called Thinking Collaborative formed to merge the Center for Adaptive Schools and the Center for Cognitive Coaching. The merger blended perfectly with our team's integration of the concepts, tools, and strategies for collaborative inquiry. As the four of us found ourselves in new and different leadership positions than when we started the grant, the ways we worked together remained consistent. We still structured our meetings to balance facilitation of collaboratively developed agendas. We included group development, content/task/product, process, and reflection in our meetings to maximize efficiency and satisfaction. Our team meetings provided us with safe places to practice and refine our identities as facilitators, collaborators and inquirers. While Samira and Mariela continued to lead the work at their school sites, Mylene and Tracey began an unexpected journey with Thinking Collaborative.

Mylene and Tracey on the Trainer's journey for Adaptive Schools

An Agency Trainer is certified by the organization after a process of scripting, co-training, and reflecting. Agency Trainers can train the agency for which they work; they train within their school district or university as part of a regular work day. Mylene had already earned Agency Trainer status prior to the grant and Tracey was now joining the journey. With the TIIP II funds, Mylene and Tracey attended the First Annual Thinking Collaborative Symposium and networked with other trainers. Mylene continues to offer four-day Foundation Trainings for her district and earned her certification as a Training Associate in February 2013. Tracey has begun scripting Adaptive Schools Foundations Seminars--the first step toward achieving Agency Trainer status.

Mylene on the training journey with Cognitive Coaching

As an ongoing learner and practitioner of Cognitive Coaching, Mylene has been providing both informal and formal professional development for self-directedness and inquiry. Our team meetings have included structured practice of coaching maps (specifically planning and reflection) and a pattern of PPP--to pause, paraphrase, and pose a question during our conversations.

Mylene embraced the challenge of becoming an Agency Trainer for Cognitive Coaching because she saw the power of inquiry to enhance student achievement through the thinking and reflecting of school leaders. With the TIIP II funds, she attended a Trainers' forum and networked with other trainers. During the 2012-2013 school year, she began co-training for two cohorts of Access to Core coaches in the Los Angeles Unified School District. One of the cohorts also included an Instructional Superintendent, Instructional Directors and Instructional Coordinators from Educational Service Center East. The eight-day sessions provided direct instruction, modeling, practice, and reflection over 150 educators. 

Leadership Matters

At the start of our grant term, Tracey attended the Adaptive Schools Leadership Seminar in Lake Tahoe with the rest of the team and was eager to share her experience and expertise with her new colleagues in the La Canada Unified School District. Although La Canada HS does not share Wilson's thematic SLC structure, the school and district have made a dedicated commitment to building a culture of collaboration, implementing frequent department meetings, semi-contiguous departmental room assignments, and four pupil-free collaboration days. In a year that signaled a great deal of transition for Tracey, her new school environment provided the opportunity to put into personal practice the skills needed to be an effective group member and the Seven Norms of Collaboration. Tracey also capitalized on the technology training she learned through attending the CUE conference by offering demonstration lessons for other teachers on how to use Web 2.0 tools for collaboration, including My Big Campus, Socrative, and Dropbox at La Canada's first annual Tech Fair.

In Tracey's second year at La Canada High School new principal Ian McFeat came on board with extensive experience with Cognitive Coaching. He was excited to imbue the spirit of Cognitive Coaching into his leadership practice and in transforming the way the school and district engage in collaboration. Rather than treat collaboration time as a quarterly activity, Ian felt it was imperative to bring collaboration into everyday practice through the formation of PLCs. At the start of the school year several administrators, department chairs, and other teacher leaders attended a Professional Learning Communities conference in San Diego and returned enthusiastic about building PLCs into the way we collaborate. After learning about her experience with Adaptive Schools, Ian asked Tracey to share some of her learnings about group development and collaboration skills with PLC leaders and ultimately, with the entire faculty. Tracey led a series of PDs introducing The Seven Norms of Collaboration and The Four Group-Member Capabilities. She also shared Adaptive Schools' Strategies and Moves Process Tool Kit, such as TAG/TAU, PAG/PAU, Visual Paragraph,Norms Inventories, and Focusing Four, which colleagues began to implement both in group meetings and in their classroom practice. After she attended the Thinking Collaborative Symposium in January, Tracey began to meet formally with Ian and another colleague began to plan professional development around PLCs, collaboration, and the implementation of Common Core State Standards. Tracey assembled a group of 14 administrators and teacher leaders to attend a ULCA-sponsored Adaptive Schools Foundations Seminar and began her own journey to become an Agency Trainer for the district.

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What are you learning about our team's transfer of learning to our sites?
2. What are you noticing about distributive leadership for collaboration and inquiry at your site?
3. What might be some implications for leading professional development in your site/system?