To the teachers who take a stand

I was at five schools this week leading focus groups for teachers as we come to the end of their first year with a new evaluation and support system. These conversations were helpful in learning how we can optimize rollout to better serve teachers and students. This first year has been imperfect and there are changes to be made. Yet there is one piece that cannot be compromised; that is, the belief that teachers are responsible for growth in their students’ achievement.

As I reflect on these conversations, I want to give a shout out to all the teachers who have drawn a bright line in the sand on this issue. These teachers have real frustrations about how the new evaluation system has been implemented, yet they know they can change the trajectory for their students. These teachers of course have awareness that students enter classrooms with varied skills and competencies, and they know exactly what can be done about it.

When teachers don’t draw this bright line and take a stand, they instead tend to focus on external factors. Some even make reckless comments about the “quality of their students” or “parents who don’t seem to care.”

I once received an email forward from a relative that made a cutesy comparison between teachers and dentists. After some context, it asked, why not determine a dentist’s effectiveness based on the rate of tooth decay of patients? All I could think about was how healthy everyone’s teeth would be if we spent eight hours a day with the dentist.

Clearly this is an issue that is still up for debate in our ranks. So I want to give a shout out to all the teachers who have drawn a bright line and taken a stand on the side of kids.

It's About the Questions!

If you’ve been in education for two days, you’ve probably come across tomes about effective coaching principles and coaching partnerships.  We all know that teachers who are well supported and well mentored have better chances of improving their instructional practices, hence improving student outcomes. 

A few months ago, a colleague at Insight shared an article with me from Educational Leadership about the importance of inquiry and coaching.  This little four-pager entitled, It’s About the Questions (Bearwald 2011) is one of the best professional “gifts” that I’ve received in a while.  It is a petite piece that packs in so much practical knowledge and good old common sense regarding effective coaching.  The title’s tag line says it all, “Effective Coaching thrives not on quick fixes and ready answers, but on questions and listening.”

I have had the recent opportunity to engage school leaders and coaches with Bearwald’s article during monthly instructional framework trainings in the Memphis City Schools system, and overwhelming, colleagues there echo each other in the article’s clear, succinct, and refreshing reminders it offers about what coaching can be when it is truly inquiry-based and ever focused on improvement.  A few key take-a-ways for me have been to:

• ask precise and incisive questions,
• ask questions that generate specific and relevant information,
• ask questions that connect the past, present, and future,
• ask questions that explore values,
• occasionally, ask permission (love this one), and 
• avoid asking why.

If you’re reading this post now, allow me to re-gift this article to you!  Check it out at http://education.ky.gov/teachers/HiEffTeach/Documents/Its About the Questions3.pdf.

Choreographing an Historic Dance

With Insight Education Group’s current Memphis City Schools partnership, we have been uniquely positioned in the middle of the largest school district merger in the history of American education.  The Memphis City Schools District serves 105,000 students and will merge with the Shelby County Schools District, which serves 48,000 students.  Insight has supported Memphis City Schools in developing and implementing the nationally recognized Teacher Effectiveness Measure (TEM) Instructional Framework for over a year and a half, while Shelby County Schools has been implementing the state’s new Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) observation process for evaluation.

With the merger that will happen in July of this year, the decision was made for the unified district to use the TEM as its evaluation model.  To the TEM’s credit, after a full year of implementation, the model demonstrated the best distribution of ratings and the strongest observer-to-student growth scoring alignment among all four of the state’s approved evaluation models (including the state’s adopted TEAM).  Other credits of the TEM include revised alignment with Common Core’s instructional shifts and consistently high evaluation responses from district observers who participant in monthly training and norming sessions facilitated by Insight.

After rounds of joint revisions with Memphis City and Shelby County to develop a third iteration of the TEM framework for the merged district, last week served as launch for the TEM 3.0 joint pilot training and implementation for a sampling of Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools observers and teachers.  The journey to 3.0 understandably started with a bit of “us” and “them” as the county and city were figuring out how to dance together.  As Insight worked to choreograph this dance, there remained hope for a graceful flow between to the two districts. The merger is a result of the city surrendering its special school district to the county, who didn’t necessarily ask to increase its district by almost three times its current size. Clearly, implementing the city’s observation model in what will be a “new” and larger county district has the potential to be a dance of two left feet!

Now that we are in the midst of two weeks of joint TEM 3.0 observer trainings, these sessions are affirming that regardless of adult tension, discomfort, and even egos, when we push each other to focus on what’s best for kids, the best within us usually shows up.  It has been a joy for city and county colleagues to enter our TEM 3.0 pilot trainings leery and leave acknowledging how the joint task force’s work has made this observation process a better one for all.  Pilot participants have commented on the best of both worlds, TEM and TEAM, being placed on the table so that as one “new” district, the work of improving teachers’ effectiveness can continue in an even stronger, more focused way, so that our students continue to achieve.

The Promise of Common Core

Last week, I received one of the best notes that a teacher could wish for. A former student sent me an email to tell me that she was pursuing teaching, and I was the inspiration behind it.  She thanked me for believing in her when no one else had. She told me that my support had given her the confidence when she needed it most.  In spite of the challenging circumstances life had thrown at her, it was easy to be her champion. She was extremely bright and capable, and she had a drive to succeed.

While I was thrilled with the content, the mechanics of the note worried me. It was riddled with misspellings, had no punctuation, and used half text language. I know it was an informal email, but it made me wonder. Had we equipped her with all of the necessary skills she needed to be successful in college and career? In a world where communication and clarity of expression holds so much weight, had we given her enough opportunity to develop these tools before, degree in hand, she set foot into the “real world”? I wonder and I worry that we didn’t do enough. Not for her, and not for our other students.

When I think of that note, I think of the promise of the Common Core: to develop college and career ready students. There has been so much work to make the college dream accessible to students, but what about when they get there? Common Core addresses those vital skills and creates a cohesive set of standards that build upon each other throughout the grades. The standards allow students to develop skills and habits over time.  Of course, the new standards have far-reaching implications for how we teach students. It’s going to be a steep learning curve, but when I think of the impact, I know it is worth it.

I wish the best for my former student, as I do for all of my former students. I can only hope, now that they have graduated high school, that they have the tools they need to achieve their dreams. I’m looking forward to the time when I don’t need to hope, but I can have confidence that they do have the tools, and I truly believe that Common Core can help us get there.

What makes a teacher great?

What makes a great teacher?  And how can we identify great teachers?

Is teaching an art? Or a science?  Can we boil down all the magic that happens in great classrooms to just a few key actions?  Many of us say we know great teaching when we see it – but how can we work together to define exactly what good teaching is?

Over the last few years we’ve seen scores of data released to try to answer that question.  First we saw Teach For America release more than a decade of data about teacher practice (see the Atlantic for the complete story http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/307841/).  More recently we’ve seen the Gates Foundation release information from their national project, the Measures of Teacher Effectiveness (MET) project. 

Teach For America’s data tells us that teachers who are phenomenally successful are those who set big goals for their students, and are constantly looking for ways to improve their practice and who plan purposefully and exhaustively. 

If you ask students, they’ll give these answers:

1.    The teacher explains things well and makes the subject interesting. 

2.    The teacher is funny and has a lot of personality.

3.    The teacher is interested in what students have to say. 

(source: http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/school/great_teacher.html)

If you ask administrators, they will tell you they are looking for passion, enthusiasm, sensitivity, heart and humor.

So where does the real answer lie?  And has it changed with the introduction of the Common Core Learning Standards?  Check out the Insight Core Framework (found here: http://www.insighteducationgroup.com/teacher-effectiveness.html) for Insight’s take on what practices a great teacher focuses on.

What do you think makes a teacher great? 

The Wonderful World of Ed Tech

It appears that teachers are in fact moving away from pen and paper or even Google Docs to plan their lessons. PBS Learning Media surveyed over 500 PreK - 12th grade teachers and found that nearly half of all respondants now use online tech resources for their lesson planning needs.

Teachers aren't shifting to online planning simply because they can save their documents with catchy titles to easily find them when needed for future school years.

New lesson planning tools are actually helping teachers unpack and evaluate standards so they can create assessments based on those standards. Teachers then develop learning activities which ensure that their students reach the intended level of understanding instead of letting a fun activity drive students toward an unspecified or unintended goal. The horse pulls the cart instead of getting pushed by the cart.

Only a few lesson planning resources make the next important step of prompting teachers to assess successes and weaknesses they experienced while teaching their lessons and improve by making adjustments. Teachers modify strong lessons and discard less effective lessons rather than returning to the classroom and realizing they are teaching the same tired lessons with the same tired examples they developed twenty years ago!

And now for the main event! (Skip the next paragraph if you're not ready for a shameless plug!)

Have you checked out Insight's online lesson planning tool? myCore™ has been praised by teachers and administrators alike for its ability to help teachers create stronger lessons that incorporate the Common Core or other standards into their plans. It offers hints, suggestions and even a coaching feature to help teachers when they need it. Teachers can attach supporting documents and modify archived lessons or exemplary lessons shared by the district. School leaders monitor progress and district administrators view reports that show standards alignment.

At Insight, we've observed great results from smart teachers using interactive games and online videos, images and articles. We think it's great that 74% of teachers surveyed are using digital resources to "reinforce and expand content" and to "motivate students to learn." We also know that the most effective teachers start with the standards to build strong lessons that incorporate interactive games and other resources into their plans. It just makes sense to start with the goal in sight. Contact us at www.InsightEducationGroup.com to see how myCore and other Insight resources can help you design high-quality courses, units and lessons based on Common Core and state standards.

Do you have other great suggestions for using educational technology resources? Share them in the comments section.