I Took A Risk This Week

 

We have really been pushing learning strategies to engage students at our school the last year and a bit. 

• We have inserted them into our staff meetings, where we model the strategies and make the staff work through them
• We built our Implementation Day around student engagement activities
• About half of out staff have received Kagan Cooperative Learning training (1-5 days worth)
• Our Circle of Friends (grade 1-6, multi-aged) groups, who meet once per month, are working on a cooperative learning project with student engagement structures embedded into it
• We have had a Kagan coach come into the school
• Many staff are sharing ideas and resources, and restructuring their classrooms around the training that they have received

 I am so pleased with the direction that we are moving, and very proud of my staff.  Still, I really wanted to push the envelope.  I wanted to do something beyond what I (and we) maybe thought that we could.  So, I took a big risk this week and put my money where mouth was.

I used a cooperative learning structure to debrief our last Circle of Friends activity...with all 237 students--at once--during an assembly.  It was wonderful!  Sure it was noisy, we would expect that when 237 people are sharing ideas with each other in the same room.  Sure, it required a bit of set up and a bunch of help from my teachers;  I think that we would expect that too.  What we ended up with, however, was spectacular.  We had every grade, partnered up, sharing their ideas of what a sensible school was (what we would see, hear and feel).  That means, for each question exactly 50 % of the room was talking and 50% was listening.  We modelled appropriate greetings and compliments, we changed partners, and we were engaged!  When I was a student, the most common scenario was 1 teacher talking and 32 students listening.  Think back to what I just said happened in the gym where everyone was partnered up and taking turns listening and talking.  1 out of every 2 students was sharing, and 1 out of every 2 students was listening, and then sharing back (with compliments!).  That is a phenomenal improvement in both participation and accountability.

A move from this:

 

To this



And, best of all, it worked!

Ed Camp

This week, our Itinerant Learning Network prepared an Ed Camp for the administrators in the district.  Similar to a the unconference that we did last year, ed camp is designed specifically for teachers and their needs.  Prior to our meeting, the planning team sent out an electronic survey requesting input from us about the burning topics on our minds.  They collected and collated that data, and organized a schedule with meeting rooms for the most common topics (see below).

 

We then chose where to go, sat down and waited for the group to form.  We then began to talk and share, generating all sorts of ideas to borrow and steal, and colleagues to network with for support and collaborate with.  It was authentic, it was real and it was time well spent.  Instead of feeling talked to, I was an active participant in each conversation, some as a listener and some as speaker.

In the end, we were asked to identify topics/colleagues that we would like to work with and some dates were given for us to meet.  People self-selected roles such as presenter, expert, experienced, novice and host.  Some of us will stick to one topic within one group, and others will move from topic to topic and group to group, as there needs see fit.  At the end of the year, we have a date scheduled for a dinner meeting where we will all collect and share out our experiences.

Some of the highlights from my experience on building collaboration in schools:

• one colleague has 60 student teachers visiting the school on Tuesday mornings to observe instructional practice in the classroom so that they can compare experiences and debrief back at the University.  Wow, isn't that cool (for both the school and the student teachers)!
• one colleague has built a block of collaborative time into the weekly schedule of the teacher-librarian to help teachers find a teaching partner to collaborate with.  We are also doing this at our school.  Yah us!
• one colleague blocks school-based team time into her assembly schedule so that the SBT can meet during weeks when there are no assemblies.  This is great for her because it is a time when no one has a scheduling conflict.  We can't do this because of part-time schedules this year, but it gives us some great ideas for next year.
• one colleague is engaging intermediate teachers with the early learning profiles (literacy) that teachers build for each student K-3.  We hope to get there soon.
• one colleague has started moving staff meetings around the school to different classrooms, giving people a chance to connect with people and ideas in  a way that they never seem able to.  What a great idea!  They are even considering moving off-site for a future meeting.
• two colleagues of very small school combined staff meetings, alternating between the two schools.  They shared the agenda and projects, and then planned implementation days and their ELFF (Early Literacy for Families) nights together.  Awesome!
• one colleague at a high school has a department identifying learning objectives and sharing those with its feeder schools in an attempt to better identify the stumbling blocks for students.  Cool.
• one large school gives up every second staff meeting for departmental collaborative time.  The Principal provides a focus question and collects minutes from department heads.  I love the stories about people finding ways to make it work.

For me, this is the type of professional development that really gets me jazzed up;  it gets me actively engaged in my own learning and learning needs.  I leave feeling like I am in touch with the pulse of the district, which is something that can be hard to do when you are busy working away at your own small school. :)

Click here for some more information on Ed Camps:  http://edcamp.org/