Action Plan

These are two action  I created for Kentridge High School to address ares of need in communication and collaboration. Some context is given about the school and it is evaluated using OSPI’s 9 Characteristics of Effective Schools. This is the culminating assignment for a class on collaboration and communication.

Ryan West- Action Plan

One School’s Action Plan Process

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, the school I teach at is currently in the process of re-evaluating our school-wide action plans due to the accreditation process. To provide some background, Kentridge High School is located in suburban Kent. It has 2400 students and 110 teachers. There is strong community and parent support although from a smaller population as our school becomes more diverse and transient.

Our principal recently conducted a staff meeting where a large amount of data was presented to provide a snapshot of our school. The goal was to look for trends in the data which we could relate to our action plans for the next seven years. Teachers were then asked to develop one or two action plans using the SMART goals criteria. It was not referred to specifically as a SMART goal but the criteria was all there. Teachers were then randomly grouped into fours and picked a goal everyone thought best met the criteria of a SMART goal. A member from each group then went wrote their goal on a large piece of paper and those were collected. Certain committees were already in place to determine SMART goals for areas of the school but a few needed to be created. The principal asked for volunteers and choose about 10 teachers to look at the school’s mission statement. In two weeks, the principal announced the SMART goals and asked for feedback from the teachers in a large group setting. After questions had been answered and feedback received, the goals were accepted by the staff.

As evidenced from a few discussions (see “Annnnnnd ACTION” by Erin Power Kozloff) in the class this week, there are inherent difficulties in a large school such as Kentridge. The most formidable one is to get all the staff members to “buy in” to a goal they did not have a direct hand in creating. Many times, these action plans or goals are created in small sub committees and the end product is only seen. Staff members accept the action plan but feel no ownership. The way Kentridge created the goals by including everyone in the data and idea process, incorporates more people into the process. It simply isn’t wise to have all 110 teachers write an action plan. A smaller group of teachers representing and getting feedback from others is a good way to approach it.

Action plans provide a common, focus way for schools small and large to impact student learning and the learning environment. It is important for everyone to be included in the creation of an action plan but concessions need to be made in the case of a large school or a specific area such as Special Education or English Language Learners. Using the SMART goal steps, these action plans can bring a school together and enable students to learn.

The Right Friends

Parents and teachers often tell students to choose their friends wisely. They understand how much influence friends have over people and the importance of surrounding yourself with those who share similar morals. Teachers would do well to follow their own advice.

The main theme in this course has been the importance of collaboration. Most teachers collaborate informally and without any protocols or guidelines. These relationships can result in improved teaching and student learning but they are not as productive as they could be. Any veteran teacher will affirm the importance of good friends in your school building. This support system is necessary in a profession which can be very demanding and isolating. When it comes to collaboration however, more is needed. These informal relationships lack the necessary framework and protocols which can make them extremely productive.

Critical Friends Groups (CFGs) and Lesson Study Groups (LSGs) are two examples of these friends. Both consist of a larger group of teachers, 10 or so in most cases, from a variety of grades and disciplines. The goal is to provide honest, useful feedback in a supportive setting. The goal is to help each other improve as teachers thereby improving student learning. The protocols for these groups make them a safe place to discuss the classroom.

Friends at school are important to maintain the sanity of teachers but CFGs and LSGs  can help teachers grow as professionals in a safe environment. If teachers want to participate in true collaboration, both groups of friends are necessary.

Student Work Protocols

Teachers can be the worst students. We are comfortable giving directions and assignments that when we are given a task to do, it is difficult to generate genuine participation. Student work protocols (SWPs) are a good example of irony. As evidenced from our weekly discussion, many teachers dread SWPs. Evaluating student work is an intensely personal action because teachers feel their professional abilities are being scrutinized. We feel the need to constantly defend our students and explain their mistakes or misunderstandings. The evaluators may be reluctant to offer their true opinions because they are worried about how they will be evaluated in turn. While these are very common occurrences during SWPs, they are not reasons to avoid the process.

Student Work Protocols are an important and valuable tool for teachers. When a teacher who isn’t personally invested in a student’s work examines it, they can discover strengths and weaknesses the classroom teacher missed. The important factor in this process is trust. Unless very clear boundaries and protocols are set up to maintain a high level of trust in the group, SWPs can quickly turn into the tooth-pulling exercise described above. Teachers must always seek to learn and improve as educators and one way to do that is to have your peers evaluate your student’s products. It isn’t always an enjoyable process but it will increase student learning which should be the goal of every teacher.

Data and the District

The website 3D2Know offers a quiz entitled “Data-Driven Decision Making” which allows educators “to determine their readiness to use data-driven decision making both accountability and continuous school improvement. Upon taking the test, I confirmed what I had already assumed- the Kent School District does not provide individual teachers with timely data on their students. The level definition I scored at was “Early” which was defined as “Aware of the area. The district has begun actively working toward achieving its goals for this area.”

The data I receive from the district are WASL scores from elementary and middle school testing along with one or two other assessments which I am not familiar with. The data is linked to the individual student in an online database and it isn’t sorted according to my individual classes. If I wanted to get a snapshot of my entire class, it would take a considerable amount of work. The district also grades a required end of course assessment but I don’t see those results until the end of the following year and even then, they aren’t presented in a useful format. The district could do much more to enable teachers to make data-driven decisions in their instruction.

On a more positive note, the district does seem to be compiling or at least sharing more school-wide data about our student populations. We identified certain areas for needed improvement using data collected from the WASL, GPAs and SAT scores. For now, this data is only available school-wide but I am hopeful that it will eventually be offered at the department or individual teacher level.

For now, I am satisfied to collect and analyze data on my own. Using scantron forms makes the process easy but I don’t like to give too many multiple choice tests. While data collection is a long and tiresome process, it greatly improves my ability to see where problems and gaps lie in my instruction and improve it.

PLC + UbD

Professional Learning Communities and Understanding by Design are two current trends in education which have more in common than it might appear. The All Things PLC website gives a concise overview of PLCs which reveals many similarities with UbD curriculum design and both strategies, when used together, can greatly improve student learning. I would like to share two ways UbD and PLCs work together and one way UbD can be improved to match PLCs.

Shared mission, values, vision, and goals: The creating of statewide EALRs and GLEs has greatly increased the use of shared goals in classrooms, schools and districts. Teachers have a similar target they are aiming towards and this also allows for more collaboration and sharing of UbD unit plans. Our school has a common pacing plan which further allows us to collaborate and develop effective lessons and units.

Collaborative teams focused on learning: The emphasis of UbD is clear from the beginning. The first step in unit planning isn’t the daily activities but the goals, enduring understandings and standards. Then assessments are developed and finally lessons are created to support those assessments. The focus is on learning a small number of significant ideas.

Results orientation: UbDs work ends when the unit has been designed. There is no emphasis on re-evaluating the unit after it has been taught or analyzing data from the assessment. This is a key aspect which could improve the unit for future years. UbD would be greatly improved by a focus on data and results.

Level 5 Principals

Distributed leadership is “a way of thinking about leadership rather than a technique or practice… Distributed leadership concentrates on engaging expertise wherever it exists within the role of the organization rather than seeking this only through formal position or role.” (Harris 10)

As I have learned from class discussion this week, the key to distributed leadership is the principal. In a traditional school building, the principal is the leader with vice-principals, department heads and teachers organized below them. In order for distributed leadership to work properly, the principal must be willing to give up control of that leadership to some extent. As stated above, this does not mean delegating to department heads or vice-principals, it is much more grass roots because teachers are responsible for choosing who the experts are. A leader like this is hard to find but in his book Good To Great, Jim Collins describes this person as a Level 5 leader.

Two characteristics of a Level 5 leader are:

- “Embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for hte company, not themselves.” (Collins 39)

- “Set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure.” (Collins 39)

Collins’ point is that Level 5 principals must be willing to give up some power in order to empower teachers to lead and succeed. Principals come and go, but if a system of distributed leadership is set in place, student learning will continue to improve because teachers are allowed and encouraged to contribute as leaders.

Communication Lessons Learned

For my reflection this week, I would like to share a few lessons I learned the hard way regarding communicating with parents. While they were frustrating to go through, I became a better teacher and communicator and I hope others can learn from my mistakes.

1. Proactive communication saves time. As a beginning teacher, my focus was on instruction and not student learning. I naively believed students and parents who were failing would seek help on their own. When grades were sent home,  I discovered that these parents and students had no idea how poorly they were doing and were upset with me. Now I contact parents and students quite early and offer solutions to raise their grades. I put the burden on them so I don’t create extra work for myself.

2. Email is not always best. I have sent out a few hasty emails to parents that have been taken the wrong way and resulted in some long and nasty replies which happen to be CC’ed to my administrator. Now, I either CC my administrator first so they are on board from the beginning or I call the parent to talk. It is too easy to misunderstand meaning through email. Many times, after a parent writes an angry email, they are much nicer over the phone because they don’t have a computer to hide behind.

3. Collaborate with a team. Many problem students have Special Education teachers or ELL teachers who work with them on a much more regular basis. Counselors also tend to know the students and their family much better while ELL teachers can be more culturally sensitive. I begin communication with parents many times but talking to other teachers and counselors first.

Communication with parents can be incredibly frustrating and time-consuming as I learned from the discussion this week. Websites such as SEDL offer good solutions for a variety of situations. When teachers are proactive, don’t use email too much and involve their colleagues, communication can be extremely productive and effective.

Bringing Hedgehogs to School

In Jim Collins bestseller, Good To Great, he discusses common practices of successful companies. One of those is called the Hedgehog Concept. The idea is that hedgehogs choose one thing to be good at and put all their energy into that which ensures their survival despite being small and otherwise defenseless. Collins argues that weaker companies are involved in too many ventures and haven’t found the one thing they can be the best at. Schools function in the same way. OSPI lists a “clear and focused goal” as one of its Nine Characteristics of High Performing Schools.

There are many goals in a school. As we have seen in our weekly discussion on these topics, departments, grade levels and even teachers all have different goals for students. The federal government has dictated some of these goals through standardized testing, NCLB and AYP. It is easy for schools to become disullusioned and fractured with so many objectives. Our school is going through a valuable and necessary process of creating a common mission statement and school-wide goals as part of the accreditation process.

A recent staff development day began by looking at raw data from student, teacher and parent surveys regarding a variety of topics. We also analyzed test data and school demographics. This provided us with a big picture of our school’s successes and shortcomings. The second half of the day was spent reworking our mission statement and goals to account for what was discovered in the data.

The objective of this day was to come up with our Hedgehog concept. What can Kentridge High School, given the faculty, students, and community, do best? We did not finish this work but I am excited about what we have discovered so far and hope we can come to a consensus in the next six months about what our Hedgehog concept will be.

Teacher-Teacher Communication

A wise middle schooler once said, “communication is key in any relationship or game”. She was referring to a casual game of volleyball at the time but her statements is still profound. Communication is such an easy topic yet difficult to truly undertake. As the article this week said, true communication happens very often but when it does, student learning is greatly improved.

Throughout our class discussion this week, many examples of communication were cited. After school programs and teacher collaboration were two of the more hotly debated topics. Teacher collaboration is important but many times it is restricted to teachers within the same subject and never crosses over to different departments. Kentridge High School places most freshman and sophomores into “pods” which are groups of 90 students who have the same three teachers for the core subjects, english, science and social studies. This allows the teachers to communicate regarding students and work together with the counselor and parents to help the student succeed in their early high school years. Another way I have seen inter-departmental collaboration have a positive impact on student learning is when a coach approaches teachers regarding a failing athlete and together they develop a plan to get the student back on track.

High schools are renown for being these segregated places where teachers rarely talk to one another. As we have learned this week, when teachers go out of their way to communicate, students benefit and learning improves. The key is not just communication but authentic, real communication without prejudices, agendas or egos.