Adding Value, Increase the School Day?

American teachers work more hours with their students than do teachers in any other developed country. That would be 1,139 hours a year in elementary schools and a few hours less in secondary, according to a recent survey. The average number of student contact hours in other advanced nations was 803 in elementary, less in secondary.
Japan, notably, was at the bottom with 617 hours in elementary, 513 in "lower secondary," and 449 in "upper secondary." Japanese teachers spend time outside their classes collaborating to develop and improve their lessons. This may explain why Japanese students consistently score at or near the top in international competitions.
If the school day is extended school districts, rather than extending student contact time, may benefit more if teachers plan together and demonstrate their lesson to their peers before presenting the lesson to their students.

Recruiting Instructional Coaches

A report in the Journal of Staff Development (Fall 2002) showed experienced teachers benefited in a number of ways from serving as coaches: through greater appreciation for reflective practice, a greater capacity for leadership, a new perspective on their own practice, and a renewed commitment to teaching.

Coaches offered testimony of the positive effects on their own practices: “I have had to re-examine my teaching practices,” said one. “I have found the remarkable enthusiasm of beginning teachers to be contagious.” One teacher spoke of the choice between being negative and a complainer . . . or being solution-oriented. What are your site’s criteria for selecting Instructional Coaches.
Source: Randall, Broward County Public Schools

SITE-BASED INDUCTION/STAFF DEVELOPMENT

The most willing and able teachers should be trained first, because they can help sell and support the training to the rest of the faculty. The decision to train the most needy teachers first reduces faculty buy-in because it stigmatizes training as remedial. Rather than mandating that teachers participate, it is more effective to create a atmosphere of success with strong teachers who volunteer.

One of the hardest things for an administrator to do is permit a program to gain strength gradually as people discover its value. There is not training that will fix a faculty in one year. Professional development is a career-long process and administrators need to develop systems that support the continual growth of everyone on their faculty.

Interviewing A Teacher

A teacher new to your school should find no surprises. Be honest in the first interview describe the student population, its challenges, and your expectations of the teachers. Every school has its own culture and the primary goal for interviewing candidates is to find teachers that complement that culture. A suggestion explain to the new teacher that although you are hiring them to teach a specific grade or subject that they work for the school and are expected to help every student be successful not just the students in their classroom. Finally, what are you looking for in your first interview?

Knowledge

• Student centered
• State Standards
• Multiple instructional techniques
• Strong subject matter knowledge

Skills

• Effective classroom management
• Communicate learning processes
• Proficient technologically
• Treats students with respect

Attitude

• Likes kids
• Positive
• Flexible

Aspiration

• Reflective thinker
• Desire to continue to learn and improve
• Comfortable with risks

Behavior

• Can work with others
• Communicates high expectations
• Accepts constructive criticism

The Good Teacher

305 Broward County Elementary School students were ask to list five characteristics of a “Good Teacher”. The students identified 48 attributes, behaviors, and attitudes they like to see a teacher demonstrate. The chart represents the top 8 characteristics that the students identified most often in their responses. The percentages are a comparison of the 8 characteristics identified by the students. The survey results are not scientific but could be used by your faculty for developing a common language and understanding of “Good Teaching” and what it means to your staff and the students at their school.

The following is an agenda you could use for a faculty or a department/grade level meeting.

1. Ask the group to brainstorm, What are the characteristics of an “Effective Teacher”?
2. Next, share what the State and District have identified as the characteristics of an “Effective Teacher” and the responses by the students above or your own students.
3. Then have the group reexamine their list and discuss any possible additions or revisions.
4. Finally, have the group identify the top five characteristics of an “Effective Teacher”.
5. A possible follow-up could be using future meetings to discuss those characteristics and what they look like in real practice.

Site-Based Professional Development

Build on Strength
Your department/grade chairs and the most willing and able teachers should be trained first. Often they become co-trainers and coaches that help transfer the new learning to the classroom. In addition, their success and enthusiasm could encourage the more hesitant colleagues to say, "Well, if it can help them, I guess it can help me too." While well intentioned, the decision to train the most needy teachers first reduces faculty buy-in by stigmatizing training as remedial and not part of a natural career long professional development process.

Make Training Voluntary
Changing habits of teaching requires that teachers focus on new ways of doing things as they begin each day or class period. Teachers must want to change. Sharing data, encouraging professionalism, and showing respect is more effective in creating a critical mass of success than mandating that teachers participate. Once training becomes mandatory it is impossible to determine which teacher are really committed to improving their practice.

Diversify Training
One of the hardest things for an administrator to do once an excellent program demonstrates its merit is to slow down. "Let's train everyone on the faculty" can prevent the systematic process of training that permits a program to gain strength as people discover its value. Another challenge for administrators is developing a differentiated, systematic approach for training your faculty that will provide immediate results as well as long-term sustainability.

For more information on developing an effective site-based professional development system please contact Deborah Porter at 754-321-3521

Are we as rigorous as we think?

The information in the chart above was gathered by Data Works Educational Research. Assuming this information is true and there is no contradictory finding in the research at present, "What are the implications of this data for political leaders, universities, school districts, administrators, teachers, students, and parents?" Respond to all or part of the question above in the comment section.

Colbert Elementary's Induction Team

At Colbert Elementary Magnet School, we have decided to have a joint effort in supporting our new teachers and second year teachers. This year, we have established a site based induction team that includes:

• administrators,
  
• team leaders,
  
• coaches and
  
• support staff.

We set a meeting schedule for the team. We meet monthly to discuss our successes and weaknesses in supporting the new educators. Coaches are asked to submit minutes about the weekly activities with their new educators. We as a team review the minutes from the meetings to see how we may better assist the coaches as well as to share best practices. We also use the information in the minutes to identify professional development needs of our school.

The Principal conducts Chats whereby - once a week any teacher may have a discussion with the principal about Colbert. This encourages new and veteran educators to have open communication with their principal.

Source: Laferne, former NESS Liaison, Colbert Elementary

Are we teaching too much?

In many European and Asian countries, teachers spend no more than half their work week in classroom instruction. They spend 17-20 hours per week teaching and devote the remainder of their 40-45 hour work-weeks to planning, collaboration, meeting with students, and observing their peers (Darling-Hammond, 1999). In the United States teachers average 5 to 10 more hours per week in the classroom than their counterparts in top-performing European and Asian countries, and thus have less time for planning together, collaborating, and implementing job-embedded professional-development strategies that are common in other countries.

Are public school teachers given too great a teaching load?
What would you do with 5 to 10 hours of non-teaching time per week?

Identify a Promising Instructional Coach

The most gifted athletes rarely make good coaches. The best violinist will not necessarily make the best conductor. Nor will the best teacher necessarily make the best instructional coach. So it's critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of coaching the performance, two entirely different skills. The best predictor of the future is the past. If a teacher shows coaching potential outside of the job, s/he may have potential on the job. Here are several traits to help identify whether someone is capable of learning to coach.

1. A teacher who looks for challenges is a potential coach.
2. Teachers who are consistently seeking solutions or improving have the potential to coach.
3. A teacher who believes that there is always a better way to do something is a potential coach.
4. A teacher who is willing to take responsibility is a potential coach.
5. A teacher who confronts problems and won't let go has coaching potential.
6. A potential coach is mentally tough. Coaching creates an undeniable tension with one's peers. The separation comes from carrying the responsibility of assessing performance.
7. Peer respect doesn't reveal ability, but it can show character and personality.
8. Potential coaches have a quality about them - that when they speak, people listen.

Induction Team/Shadow Program

We have chosen our Induction Team/Staff Development Team at Coconut Palm Elementary. We chose our team leaders because they are aware of teachers and their needs. We meet and discuss what Induction is and how we want to go about creating an atmosphere where all of our teachers, not just the new ones, would benefit from the process. We came up with seven topics for panel discussions with the entire faculty. Child Study, Conferencing, Time Management, End of the Year procedures, and others will be addressed. Our panels will come mostly from our faculty. However, when needed, we will use outside experts. The faculty will be invited two weeks before the event and will enjoy commercials to promote the discussions also. Hopefully, this will begin a school-wide staff development plan that will help our new as well as experienced teachers progress in their field.

We are also implementing a Shadow Program for all of our Support Staff and Committee Chairpersons. This will hopefully lead to a situation where someone is ready to step into a position long before it is vacant.

Source: Kim McCarthy, Coconut Palm Elementary

Preparing for FCAT

Teachers should always use the "same language" that the FCAT uses because it reduces the chances for students to be confused. New Teachers received an invaluable document from the Florida Department of Education called Reading and Math Performance Task Specifications. This document has an abundance of information. Presently the best sections for New Teacher to review with their students are:

1. The test stems (the ways the questions will be asked) and
2. The content limits. Both of these areas will help students to be better "test takers" and also help new teachers become aware of how the FCAT is presented.

Source: Susan Littlefield, Curriculum Support K-12

Quotes from Outstanding Coaches

Coaches in sports sometimes say things in the most insightful ways . The quotes below were collected from several sites on the internet. As you read these quotes think about how they apply to our work as teachers. Please respond to one or all the quotes in the comment section.

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes." -- John Wooden

"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to." -- George Allen

"Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear."
--John Madden

"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are."
--Ara Parasheghian

"Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers."
--Pat Riley

" Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer." --Rick Pitino

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”--Lou Holtz

“It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.”--Bear Bryant

"Sit up straight, listen, and participate."--Pat Summitt

Expand the Lines of Leadership

A key element of school self-assessment is “distributed leadership,” a concept introduced by Harvard University’s Richard Elmore that speaks to the need to tap a broad range of competencies within a school. By recognizing the potential many teachers have to improve instruction throughout their schools and by building their leadership capacity, the process can give teachers a powerful stake in school reform and a renewed commitment to self-improvement strategies in their own classrooms.

Veteran teachers also can participate in creative collaborations to analyze and learn from student work. New York University professor Joseph McDonald describes, in the October 2002 Phi Delta Kappan, collaborative processes to review student work that help teachers avoid snap judgments about student abilities. At this time of increasingly severe consequences for failure to meet academic standards, such efforts are especially needed. As Mr. McDonald says, they combat “a century’s practice of classifying students on the basis of premature judgments of their incapacities.” Successful veteran teachers can benefit significantly from re-examining how they view and analyze their students’ work.

Source: Education Week, Veteran Teachers: The Linchpin of School Reform, By Denise Glyn Borders

Schlechty on Education

What is learning? How are skills and knowledge acquired? Learning is a process that requires action and experience, specifically voluntary action on the part of the student. What teachers do is less important than what teachers are able to motivate students to do. Students learn by activities that include “imitating, listening, creating, muddling around, and talking (p. 42).” Yet what matters less than the mode or style of learning is the meaning students attach to what they do and learn. Knowledge and skills cannot be acquired if the material presented is neither relevant nor compelling, and if they cannot be actively involved in both choosing and doing the job of learning

Who is to teach? Teachers must be facilitators, leaders, and inventors. Not only must they be constantly inventing knowledge work, they must understand their students. Many teachers, even the creative and inventive ones, are presently operating in schools intuitively (and sometimes consciously) viewing students as customers. Unfortunately, many teachers seem reluctant to acknowledge that students have the power all customers have: the power of choice.

Teachers need to know.
1) How to interest students in topics they would not ordinarily care about but need to care about.
2) Allow students to make choices that will lead to important, relevant learning.

Because of the great many responsibilities that teachers have, those interested in becoming educators, and those who already are in the profession must be:
1) endlessly motivated to discovering how to challenge students,
2) must be willing to lead as well as step aside when the situations demands it, and
3) must be reflective and self-critical to determine how well the work is being invented for the learners involved.
Source: http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Schlechty.html

Where would you prefer to teach?

What if...?

Where would you prefer to teach?

School System A:
• What if a district department made all of the decisions regarding your NESS/Induction support?
• What if the teacher leader coordinating new educator support was omitted from the hiring process?
• What if only new teachers hired before the first day of school were provided a comprehensive orientation experience?
• What if only one coach supported a teacher in need?
• What if teachers met only once a month to listen to other teachers talk?
• What if professional learning was dependent entirely on outside human resources?
• What if participant attendance was the only factor used to assess the effectiveness of professional development?

School System B:
• What if the teachers and leaders at your school made the decisions regarding your NESS/Induction support?
• What if the teacher leader coordinating new educator support was involved in the hiring process?
• What if all teachers new to the school were provided a comprehensive orientation experience?
• What if teams supported teachers in need?
• What if teachers met regularly to study more effective teaching practices?
• What if professional learning utilized the expertise of the school staff?
• What if a continuous improvement process was used to monitor the effectiveness of professional development?

Is Professional Development Worth $$$$

Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other training opportunities are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how a faculty teaches, which in turn will help students learn more. However, there’s evidence that short-term interventions, such as afternoon or early morning workshops, don’t have much of an effect when it comes to changing teacher behaviors. On the other hand, data suggest that well-designed, substantive training programs are worth the time and effort. Well-designed and substantive training programs by Florida professional development standards involves four steps planning, delivery, follow-up, and evaluation.

Gibbs and Coffey looked at the effects of training programs at 20 universities in eight countries. Each training program involved at minimum of 60 hours (300 hours for the longest) and spread those activities across four to 18 months. The results provide confirmation that in-depth training does make a significant impact on teaching. A faculty that participates in well-designed training programs becomes more learner-focused and their students are more likely to learn.

Planning next year’s professional development calendar will begin second semester, before you start planning take time to reflect on the professional develop offered this year to your staff. How did your site’s professional development experience influence changes in teacher behaviors to enhance student learning? What can administrators and teacher leaders do to help their faculty marry Florida Standards with appropriate teaching processes?
Source: Academic Leader, Magna Publications

INDUCTION MATTERS: The Difference between Mentoring and Induction

A growing body of research demonstrates that implementing a comprehensive induction program is one of the most effective methods for retaining quality teachers, and can cut teacher attrition rates by 50 percent. In addition, designing well-crafted induction programs can improve teaching quality and increase teacher retention. (www.teacherquality.org)

Mentoring is considered a formal coaching relationship in which an experienced teacher gives guidance, support and feedback to a new educator. High quality mentor programs fully train mentors/coaches, pair first and second year teachers with mentors in similar grades and content areas, and release time and common planning time is provided for mentors and mentored.

Induction goes beyond mentoring to provide an extensive framework to support the continual professional development for everyone in the organization. Comprehensive induction programs may vary in their design, but essential components include a high quality mentor program, ongoing professional development, access to a supportive network in the school, and a criteria-based evaluation of job performance and the process itself.

Mentoring: Focuses on survival and support
Induction: Promotes career learning and professional development

Mentoring:Fosters a mentor apprentice relationship
Induction: Fosters interdependent collegial support of everyone on the staff

Mentoring: Treats mentoring as an isolated event
Induction: Induction is comprehensive and is a part of a career long professional development design

Mentoring: Reacts to whatever arises
Induction: Acculturates a vision that proactively adapts to changes in expectations and in the organization

Mentoring: Short term
Induction: Long term, recurrent, and sustained

Source: Dr. Sheila Lewis, HRD Program facilitator

Achieving the Vision

One of the barriers to achieving the vision is selecting the appropriate leadership method to turn a belief statement into reality. Even though most principals know what might be best for the organization, it is essential that in order to sustain positive change the faculty must experience processes that lead to commitment instead of compliance regardless of district, state, or federal pressure. Perhaps that is what Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards for School Leaders (ISLLC) Standard 1* is all about, facilitating the development of the staff rather than managing the staff.

Even though autocratic methods might produce immediate results, since there is little if any transfer of ownership, old practices will soon return. Since leaders “should concern themselves with doing the right thing,” he or she must focus on processes that eventually influence employee behavior that build relationships. Soliciting feedback for decision making or empowering employees might not always yield instant results, however these methods allow followers to be treated equally (democratic style), promote trust, and provides a “a voice in decisions.” When these factors are considered, the ownership for change transfers to the employees, providing a sense of personal accountability and eventually high moral and productivity.

ISLLC Standard 1: A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community.

Source: Randall Deich, NESS Program Facilitator

Monitoring the Vision

Where is the integrity of the vision, mission, and implementation plans if not regularly monitored, evaluated, and revised? Most vision activities stop at the faculty/department meetings where brainstorming and wordsmithing are quite common and are not revisited until the start of the next school year. One of the gaps of identifying the vision is to follow through with an evaluation plan.

Unfortunately, data is a four-letter word in our culture of education. Traditionally data was always used to reference whether acts were good/bad or effective/ineffective. This is when data is used to judge decisions or outcomes, however data can be used to inform. There is a large gap between what data says and what data means. When using evaluation data for the vision, all that needs to be addressed is how closely aligned are the beliefs to the actions. Since one of the responsibilities of the leader is to assist in the change process, “the leader must assist individuals in understanding and adjusting to the environment of the organization” (Green, 2005, pg.32). Depending on the maturity level of the staff the leader should provide or facilitate processes that support the monitoring of the vision.

Monitoring the development of a school-wide vision can be a challenge. Measuring where we begin and where we end is common practice and comfortably fits our paradigm of pre and post testing. However, in order to determine whether growth is, in fact, continuous, frequent monitoring of the small steps along the way is essential. For example, if the vision statement refers to the school as a learning environment for teachers and students, then what systems and procedures are in place that fosters this outcome? Does the leader provide the opportunity to collaborate? Is the vision kept in mind when the master schedule is developed or is providing time to collaborate an afterthought? It is essential to constantly ask, ‘How are we doing?”

Source: Randee Deich, HRD Program Facilitator