Plano Professional Practice Analysis SchoolWide Best Practice Implementation Tasks and Examples

Best Practice9: Model and promote substantive collaboration to foster a learning community.

Implementation Tasks / Examples from Best Practices Research
Participate actively in teacher team meetings
  1. Begin to attend as many teacher team meetings across grades or departments in your school as possible. Obviously, the size of your school will determine the structure of school leader participation. In larger secondary schools, department chairs may be the primary participants.* All leaders, however, should be involved to the greatest degree possible in these meetings. While establishing a regular attendance pattern is important, it is only the first step in your involvement.
  1. Ensure that school leaders develop the capacity to contribute actively and in meaningful ways to the discussions. Leaders should also address any impediments to open and honest discussion among team members in the meetings, challenge teams to experiment with new areas of collaboration (i.e., common assessments), and monitor to ensure the involvement of all team members.
  1. Discuss leaders' experiences within collaborative team meetings on a regular basis. Have your leadership team mine the experiences for strong examples of effective strategies that might be emulated across grades or departments.
*Even in the largest schools, principals should ensure that they attend at least one team meeting per semester across every grade and subject. / The school-wide focus lessons are much more than a daily 10 minute lesson; they have become part of the instructional fabric at Selma. The idea is that teachers and students must constantly drill down on basic skills with the focus lesson while also engaging in high-level thinking with their curriculum. In addition, the focus lessons are a baseline for starting discussions on modifying instructional strategies and making sure that all students are mastering the standards. The instructional leadership of school administrators has been a huge support and reason for teacher buy-in at Selma. As active participants at focus lesson meetings, school administrators acknowledge that part of their job is to be a support resource for teachers. By regularly attending focus meetings and completing 15 required formal classroom visitations each month, administrators communicate that they are there to support the teachers. An administrator observed: "We see the focus lesson meetings, so when we do our teacher observations and if they are struggling with those, the counselors can model teach. We are here to support the teachers. Because we are doing that, there is a better relationship with administration. I used to be a teacher, so there is trust there."
Selma High School (Selma Unified School District, CA)
During their weekly subject team meetings, teachers discuss the progress of individual students. For example, the 9th grade algebra teacher tells the 10th grade teacher what to expect from particular students, so the 10th grade teacher feels like he knows all his students before he even meets them. The teachers emphasized that these discussions are not "gripe sessions" about individual students but rather "scouting information." The school assigns each of its three guidance counselors to a particular core subject area (math, science, and English), and they each attend their respective department meetings. Close collaboration between teachers and counselors allows Excel's staff to coordinate academic support services and counseling to students and make sure that students receive these services at the first sign of academic difficulty.
Excel High School (Boston Public Schools, MA)
Collaboration is part of the school culture. The principal leads grade-level meetings that provide opportunities for teachers to exchange views, discuss concerns about individual students, and talk about what works in their classrooms. Teachers also share a common prep time with other teachers on their grade level and have informal gatherings in the morning to watch tapes or discuss salient topics. Teachers also communicate frequently by email. A teacher shared, "We all have a school network and an email address; Most people check it at least once or twice per day, and mandatory info or daily info comes through email." Another teacher said, "At the end of the day, doors are propped open, and people call out to each other and check up on each other and offer to help each other; There is a real strong sense of community in our school."
The principal reports that all this collaboration has a positive impact on instruction because there are so many good teachers talking about what works in their classrooms and sharing their great ideas.
Osage Elementary School (Voorhees Township School District, NJ)
When teachers at Ethridge Elementary School need support to implement the curriculum or to handle any classroom problem, they first can turn to Tuesday Afternoon Communication. This is a weekly school-wide activity which allows for more interaction among teachers, aides, and administration for the purpose of sharing and networking horizontally and vertically. Educators can seek support from the district's supervisors of instruction, who are available for curricular and classroom advice. In addition, the school librarian and guidance counselor at Ethridge, who were longtime teachers, often make themselves available to support teachers.
Ethridge Elementary School(Lawrence County Schools, TN)
In Memphis City Schools, principals meet monthly in small groups for continuous updates on state goals, particularly those related to literacy, which is a key focus for educators in the district. At these meetings, principals share information and discuss effective strategies. A district leader indicates that the district office has recently restructured these principal meetings to better facilitate "real" conversations about instruction and learning. In addition to district-level collaboration, school leaders stress the importance of collaborating with their staff. For example, a leader at Hamilton Elementary School describes his work and meeting with all members of the instructional staff, including teachers, instructional leaders, team leaders, the literacy coordinator, and the principal intern. He believes this collaboration and communication keeps all members of the educational team focused on the school's goals and aware of the expectations for student success.
Hamilton Elementary School (Memphis City Schools, TN)
Build teachers' capacity for collaboration
  1. Ensure that the time has been allocated for teachers to meet collaboratively. However, this is only the very first step to building collaborative teams.
  1. Identify the specific behaviors that you expect to see in collaborative team meetings (e.g., full involvement of all team members, openness in discussing what is and is not working, questioning techniques), and share these expectations with all team members.
  1. Determine what methods you will use to build each of these identified skills if assistance is needed (e.g., instructional coaches, modeling, observations of effective teams). Monitor team meetings to ensure that you have provided the necessary support to create effective and exciting collaborative teams.
/ Administrators at International stress collaboration as a way of helping teachers continue to grow professionally. By including dedicated collaboration time on the schedule, school leaders ensure consistent teacher interaction. With the exception of kindergarten teachers, who meet every other week due to different class schedules, teachers collaborate weekly on early release days. In addition, teachers have staff meetings twice per month and meet monthly in grade-level teams to plan for a four-week period and decide on common assessments. One teacher observed, "We are used to collaborating because it works." In addition, because of the collaborative environment, "no one wants to leave the school." The principal shared that her focus in collegial collaboration is on "giving prompts to get teachers to think and ponder, creating situations where they can collaboratively discuss and fine-tune skills, and building the capacity inside that they truly are the experts with the capability of moving students forward." One way to "start the process of thoughtful and meaningful conversations" is through examining and discussing student data.
International Elementary School (Long Beach Unified School District, CA)
School leadership encourages the faculty to use collaboration time to look at the data and the achievement gap. According to one site leader: "We wanted folks to not just look but have conversation. You have to take it to the next level: How it breaks down [and] how to take it back to the classroom...We did it all and had conversations in groups and had people report out...The perception has to translate into action in the classroom." Another school leader recognizes that "it's hard to admit you might have been teaching 'wrong'& It takes a big person to be willing to change your teaching practices." But he also recognizes that structures can be put in place to support these difficult changes. "You can't change if you don't reflect; you can't reflect if you don't have time. The state is assuming the more instructional time the better for students— that's not necessarily true. The key is teachers. Teachers need more time to think."
The Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (Los Angeles Unified School District, CA)
During any given week or month, teachers will have numerous opportunities to meet and critically examine curriculum, instruction, assessment results, student work, and other significant issues that the school faces. Every morning begins with daily common planning time from 7:50 a.m. to 8:20 a.m. These are focused sessions with specific agendas. According to one teacher, "Every day there is some type of collaboration going on that is not just getting ready for the school day." Every Friday morning, the entire faculty meets for breakfast and a planning session. On one Wednesday each month, there is an "early-out" extended session for curriculum planning. Teachers at the same grade level and across grade levels also constantly arrange informal meetings during or after the school day. Collegial consultations about teaching and learning are a seamless and constant flow of interactions among educators.
Irving Elementary School (Berwyn South School District 100, IL)
Teachers describe that school-wide formal and informal collaboration occurs "all the time." Teachers refer to their colleagues as their most valuable resource. They explain that collaboration facilitates teamwork, makes instruction easier (due to shared lesson plans and activities), increases teachers' confidence, and helps classrooms catch up. Teachers describe the staff as a family of people who are very comfortable with each other. Teachers willingly share ideas and information both during formal meetings and informally over lunch and outside the classroom. Teachers also, on occasion, co-teach, model new lessons, or teach lessons for other teachers when they are more proficient in a certain topic area. One teacher comments that the principal has helped establish a collaborative environment that is safe and focused on students. Another muses that schools with high collaboration are probably the higher performing schools.
Thompson Elementary School (Aldine Independent School District, TX)
The grade-level release days are a critical opportunity for educators to collaborate, planning data-informed interventions. Worksheets built by the program specialist offer structured protocols by which teachers can probe the data to learn from successes, confront challenges, and make new plans. School leadership receives a record of the planning sheets completed by the teachers in these sessions.
Garfield Elementary School (Long Beach Unified School District, CA)
Promote collaboration through structured peer classroom visits
  1. Begin to provide opportunities for teachers to visit one another's classrooms. To institutionalize this practice in your school, you may wish to ask for volunteers at first. Your goal is to establish a culture in which all teachers expect to visit and be visited by their peers.
  1. Meet with teachers who have participated to determine how you can facilitate meaningful discussions following the visits. It is highly likely that teachers will need structure and coaching to develop the skills to talk about what worked and what didn't work in an observed lesson.
  1. Use the above experiences to begin to structure a process for peer classroom visits in your school.
/ The principal understands the shift high school teachers are making to become willing and comfortable in opening up their classrooms to each other and outside visitors. She addresses teacher apprehension regarding Action Walks seriously and publicly: "I know some of you are a little nervous about your lessons. Don't be. You are all wonderful teachers, and there is so much to be learned from each other's classroom."
Bolsa Grande High School (Garden Grove Unified School District, CA)
Action Walks opened communication and understanding between middle and high schools and allowed high school teachers to set a new bar. In preparation for the Action Walks visits to two of Bolsa Grande's feeder middle schools, the principal wrote in a memo to the teachers: "As you walk, you are encouraged to contemplate the expectations you have for your students, the level of work your students are producing, and compare/contrast that to what you are seeing in the elementary and junior high classrooms. This will be the topic of discussion at our debriefing sessions."
Bolsa Grande High School (Garden Grove Unified School District, CA)
Teachers at Moorestown Upper Elementary School are supported by colleagues and by school and district administrators. The school does not have a lead teacher structure, but district-level content supervisors are readily available to work with teachers, observe lessons, or teach model lessons. A district literacy facilitator also provides assistance by supporting training for and implementation of the new balanced literacy initiative. In addition, the school supports teachers by making it easy for them to visit their colleagues' classrooms. A school administrator expressed: "We encourage other class observations. We have a lot of talent in our building, so releasing a teacher to observe another teacher is great."
Moorestown Upper Elementary School (Moorestown Township School District, NJ)
As another means of fostering collaboration, leaders at Shelby Middle School provide teachers with the opportunity to visit colleagues' classrooms. Each year, teachers conduct three collegial walkthroughs, which pair different grade levels, and engage in follow-up reviews. The principal expressed: "It's more for the teachers who are walking through than the person receiving the teacher. There is an abundance of good teaching going on in the building, but teachers never get out of their classrooms & As a staff, it's about trying to break down the boxes and work professionally and collegially toward the same goal of improved student learning." The walkthroughs thus serve as a way for teachers to learn additional strategies and ideas.
Shelby Middle School (Shelby Public Schools, MI)
Perry Middle School also uses peer walkthroughs as a form of instructional monitoring, benefiting not only the teachers observed but also those observing. As one school leader expressed: "We thought that the benefit would be to the teacher, and that's true. But the benefit has really been from the teachers going in and observing other teachers teach. They're learning much from, as we call it, 'this side of the clipboard.' You learn more when you see other people teach and you learn more when you are being observed and get that feedback."
Perry Middle School (Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, TX)
Instructional monitoring is collaborative at South Houston Intermediate School and involves administrators, site-baseddecision councils, department heads, facilitators, teachers, students, and parents. One teacher observed, "At any moment in time, the teachers are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of their students." With their knowledge of student performance, teachers participate in teams to review and take action based on data from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills (TAKS), the six-week benchmarks, and the weekly target tests. Monitoring teacher performance at the school also includes data reviews, in addition to observations, weekly lesson plan reviews, team meeting visits, and reviews of parent conferences and student TAKS talks.
South Houston Intermediate School (Pasadena Independent School District, TX)

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