Impacting Teacher Practiceto Ensure Student Learningat Discovery Middle School

“Students will not be energized, thrilled, and empowered by learning until educators are energized, thrilled, and empowered by learning. When all educators engage in humane professional learning that empowers them to embrace proven teaching methods, we can move closer to the goal of every student receiving excellent instruction in every class every day.”

Jim Knight, p. 6

Unmistakable Impact

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Our goal is the development of the student as an independent, self-directed lifelong learner. In other words, to help students develop as autonomous learners, with the appropriate skills, concepts, and attitudes necessary for their life’s journey. 

Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning

LEARNING COMMUNITIES: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment.

What is a PLC?

A professional learning community is an

ethos that infuses every single aspect

of a school’s operation. When a school

becomes a professional learning

community, everything in the school

looks different than it did before.

~Andy Hargreaves (2004)

Professional Learning Community (PLC) Defined

Educators are committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research in order to achieve better results for the students they serve.

PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators.

~DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many (2006)

Focus on LearningTo truly reform American education we

must abandon the long-standing assumption that the central activity of

education is teaching and reorient all policy making and activities around a new

benchmark: student learning.

~Edward Fiske (1992)

Focused on Results

Collaborative cultures, which by definition have close relationships, are indeed

powerful but unless focused on the right things may end up

being powerfully wrong. ~Michael Fullan

Focus on CollaborationCapacity building . . .is not just

workshops and professional development for all. It is the daily

habit of working together, and you can’t learn this from a workshop or

course. You need to learn it by doing it and having mechanisms for getting

better at it on purpose.--Michael Fullan (2005)

1. What are 1. What are students students

supposed to supposed to know and know and

do?do?

2. How do 2. How do we know we know

when when students students

have have learned?learned?

3. What do 3. What do we do when we do when

students students HAVEN’T HAVEN’T learned?learned?

4. What do 4. What do we do when we do when

students students HAVE HAVE

learned the learned the content?content?

The Four Critical Questions of PLC’s

Our Target: Moving our Students Forward in their Learning

The emphasis is on developing a “learning community” of instructional leadership for district administrators, principals, assistant principals, and teachers from which high quality teaching and learning is identified, deconstructed, and strategically developed in classrooms. The result is a focused and insightful approach to effective instructional leadership and teaching/learning excellence.

Dr. Thomas Fowler-Finn

http://www.instructionalrounds.com/

“A teacher’s job is not to teach kids, a teacher’s job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the student learns the things we want them to learn.”

Phil Schlecty

Teacher Target: The StudentsI can move my students forward in their learning by:

1. Aligning my learning target and activities so that I am engaging students in their own learning through teaching strategically

2. Participate in internal/external Instructional Rounds and Collaborate with my triad/duo to learn from one another so that I am continuously learning new and shared ways to engage my students

3. To incorporate learning from my professional development in my classroom for the

betterment of student learning .

Our Challenge: Be Great!

Benefits of Effective TeamworkSubstantial gains in student achievementHigher-quality solutions to problemsIncreased confidence among allTeacher’s ability to support one anotherAbility to examine and test new ideas,

methods, & materialsMore systematic assistance to beginning

teachersExpanded pool of ideas, materials, and

methodsSchmoker, Results, p. 12.

Important Principles“Increases in student learning occur only as

a consequence of improvements in the level of content, teachers’ knowledge and skill, and student engagement.”

“If you change any single element of the instructional core, you have to change the other two.” Instructional Rounds in Education, pp. 24-25

Collective ResponsibilityThe best organizations are places

where everyone has permission, or

better yet, the responsibility to

gather and act on quantitative and

qualitative data, and to help

everyone else learn what they know.--Pfeffer & Sutton (2006)

The Power of Professional Learning Communities

The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community. The path to change in the classroom lies within and through professional learning communities.

~Milbrey McLaughlin (1995)

Collaborative Leadership“The most effective way to forge a winning team is to call on the players’ need to connect with something larger than themselves….I’ve discovered that when you free players to use all their resources – mental, physical, and spiritual – an interesting shift in awareness occurs. When players practice what is known as mindfulness – simply paying attention to what’s actually happening – not only do they play better and win more, they also become more attuned with each other.”

(Phil Jackson, basketball coach and author of Sacred Hoops)

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“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead