Professional Learning

EDUL 6017

On Professional Development at Middle School:

The culture of Middle School is a culture of continuous learning and growth. The expectations of members of the learning community are clear and high. The strengths of our professional learning community include: the vision, the decision making process, development of teacher leaders, use of data, collaboration, and the structural framework for learning opportunities. I feel that the school needs to improve in the following areas: observation of teachers by teachers, the mentoring program, looking at student work.

The vision is a prime factor in empowering the community for change (Owens, 2001). A Middle School, the vision is clear, consistent, and pervasive. The motto is posted in all classrooms, and teachers have pins that we wear with the motto on them. We all know where we are going and why we are going there.

Our specific course often changes as we look at our student's performance and adjust to meet their needs, but the direction is clear. The data drives our decision making and our direction, but everyone is aware when we change course to meet our goals. When we found out that our test scores were low in math, a leadership meeting was called in the summer to address the issue and develop a plan of action for the next school year.

In the discussion of any difficult problem, the vision invariably comes up as a guide in finding the best solution. All decisions, except some that depend on policy from the county or state, are made by the leadership team. The team is a truly representative body of the staff. Unless a decision must be made extremely quickly, we discuss the problem and possible solutions in one meeting, then go back to our respective teams and discuss the issues with them. Only after we have gotten feedback from our teams, do we go back to a leadership meeting to discuss the issue again and come to consensus or vote on the issue.

We are intentional about developing new leaders at Middle School. This year, the leadership team read Developing the Leaders Around You by John Maxwell, and began each leadership meeting with a teacher led discussion of an aspect of the book that would help to frame our discussions for the day. When two of the three team leaders on 6 th grade received promotions, there were leaders that had been mentored and were ready to take on the role of team leader.

One reason that we have so many teacher leaders is because we collaborate consistently. At the beginning of the school year, all staff members attended workshops on peer diversity and color theory, so that we would be better equipped to work together efficiently. Teacher leaders work together to solve problems and to get the job done.

The structural framework of our planning times helps us to achieve collaboration. Each grade level has common planning time every day. Every Monday, we meet together for professional development that relates to current issues within the school. On Tuesdays, we meet with our content area to plan together and review past lessons. On Wednesdays, we meet with out cross curricular teams to discuss students and activities that extend across subject areas. We also use this time to discuss any issues brought out at leadership meetings.

Though many aspects of the professional learning community are intact and strong, the mentoring program at Middle School needs to be revised. According to Roberts and Pruitt (2003), the mentor's purpose is to help the new teacher to become an effective member of the learning community, to pass on the culture of the community, and to build trust between the new teacher and the mentor. At Middle School, there is currently a mentor program, but there is not a system of checks and balances within the program. Mentors at Middle School are not selected, they volunteer, and since there is a stipend associated with mentoring, the volunteers are not always sincere in their desire to work with new teachers nor are they the most highly qualified teachers. When I was assigned a mentor at Middle School, the mentor was chosen based on our content areas rather than our compatibility in other areas. My mentor visited my room one time the entire year. For a teacher new to the community, it was a difficult situation. I had to chose between being a tattle tale and possibly building a wall between myself and other teachers, or continuing without a mentor. Because of the strength of the rest of the school's professional development and the kindness of other more genuine teachers, I had a very successful year despite my mentor's absence.

In addition to improving the mentoring process, the school would benefit from encouraging more teacher to teacher observations and dialogue. This is something that has been suggested, but has not been incorporated formally at our school. It is my plan this year to use some of the Monday staff development sessions to allow teachers to observe teachers in different grade levels for 20-30 minutes, then come back together to dialogue about what we are doing well as a school and what we may still need to work on.

Another addition to Monday meetings, which I would like to introduce, is the sharing of student work at least once a month. We would definitely need to establish protocols and procedures, but I think that examining student work would increase our dialogue and professional learning.

Insights:

At Middle School, we are constantly reviewing the data from conventional tests, but we do not look critically at student work. It struck me that looking at student work can help to push us through the realm of numbers representing student achievement and bring more attention to work as a reflection of student learning. It is much easier to rely on numbers to compare students, but it does not challenge us as a learning community as much as work samples could. The key is to see student work as the results of a teacher's instruction (Roberts& Pruitt, 2003). When you use this mental model, the learning community has to address students who are struggling by adjusting teaching through dialogue, rather than by blaming students or parents for their areas of weakness.

In order to tackle this or any challenge, the professional learning community has to have a culture of trust and hope. Teachers must be empowered to look critically and to adjust methods to do what is best for students. The importance of school culture and vision is essential to the success of the school.

Finally, the learning community must develop an aptitude for adaptability and constant inquiry. As Senge reminds us, it is not just about changing in response to things, it is about generative change that improves the environment for creative thinking and growth (Senge, 1990). For my school next year, this will mean that we need to make sure to incorporate time for reflection on our current models and how we can improve continuously. We will have to work to involve and inspire all members of our professional learning community to reflect upon themselves and to achieve personal mastery, so that our organization can dialogue and learn most effectively (Smith, 2001).

Questions:

My primary question about staff development is how to create a sustainable program that can stay intact beyond an individual principal. How do schools that are moving in the right direction continue to do so after the principal moves on? My current principal made very significant progress at her last school. When she came to Middle School, her former school's scores dropped substantially within a year. How can we keep this from happening at our school? We are working on some strategies to help to keep the same thing from happening when she moves on to the high school. First, our current principal and our leadership are very involved in the hiring process for the new principal and in setting in place the other leaders in the school from our current staff. As the principals are interviewed, the vision of our school is laid out for them and there is an understanding that they will be expected to continue with the vision. We are continuing to work towards our vision as we wait for the new principal to be named. We are making sure that we are hiring the best people we can find that are aligned with our vision, and we are making plans to improve staff development for next year. The area superintendent wants to make our cluster a model of staff development across schools.

This leads me to my second question, how do you increase involvement and dialogue across grade levels and between schools. I think that as our school grows we are going to have to work diligently at vertical teaming to make sure that our students have a consistent experience. I also believe that it will be important to work with the elementary and high school teachers to build consistency with their schools. This would help our students to transition more successfully between grade levels and schools. A joint leadership retreat that includes the high school and middle school leaders would be a good initial step in increasing communication between the schools. Within our school, which has grown from a population of 1000 to 2000 in three years, I think that it would benefit us to create houses within the schools. If all of the students from my team of 5 teachers, go to the same 5 teachers in 7 th and then 8 th grade, then teachers across grade levels can work together and dialogue about student needs and achievement.

My final question is how to make the mentoring program more successful. My first thought on this would be to create cohorts of new teachers and mentors. Instead of assigning one mentor to one new teacher, I think it might be beneficial to assign three new teachers to three mentors of varying strengths and experiences. For example, one mentor may work with the teachers on behavior management, another mentor might work with the teachers on the incorporation of technology in the classroom. The final mentor might work with the teachers on communication with students and parents. Then the three mentors and three new teachers would form a cohort that could meet as a group for monthly dialogue about common problems. Each mentor would check up on the new teachers, looking specifically at how they are doing in the mentor's area of concentration. This might help to increase accountability as the three mentors work together. This would also allow for differences in personality, as particular new teachers might be more inclined to work with one of the three mentors.

Works Cited:

Lashway, L. (1998, April) Creating a learning organization. Eric Digest , 121. Retrieved June 24, 2006 from http://cepm.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest121.html

Owens, R.G. (2001) Organizational behavior in education: Instructional leadership and school reform (7 th ed.) Boston : Allyn & Bacon.

Roberts, S., & Pruitt, E. (2003). Schools as professional learning communities: Collaborative activities and strategies for professional development. Thousand Oaks , California : Corwin Press, Inc.

Senge, P. M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline. The art and practice of the learning organization , London : Random House.

Smith, M. (2001). Peter Senge and the learning organization. In Infed [Web]. From http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm