Category: Building Professional Learning Communities (Fall 2007)
The Professional Learning Community that we started (see Jewish Educational Leadership 6:1 Fall 2007, p. 49) with the Task Force for Meeting Individual Needs has not continued as a distinct entity. It has, however, left us with a powerful model for implementing educational or organizational change. So, for example, this year we determined that “top down” requests for enhanced school-home and internal school communication were not effective. I asked several teachers if they would consider starting a Task Force on Home-School Communication, and we now have bi-weekly meetings of a team of about 8 teachers that has focused on internal communications (coordinating calendars/events schoolwide) and home-school communications.
After the Communications Task Force presented to the faculty at our end-of-year inservice meeting, several teachers excitedly approached me to ask if they could meet over the summer and create a teacher-led Ecology Task Force to facilitate the “greening” of our school. And that weekend, two teachers approached me at a Bar Mitzvah and asked if they could work on a character development curriculum for middle school students (no doubt inspired by watching less than perfect Bar Mitzvah guest behavior!).
This, I think, is the most wonderful legacy of our initial Task Force for Meeting Individual Needs and our experience with Professional Learning Communities. We are learning to share the challenges of institutional and educational change with our teachers. They are the very people, the only people. really, who can make it happen. By relying on them we recognize and honor them, by relying on them, we serve them and our students best.
Below are the communications we shared with our faculty and with our parents as we prepared for our transition.
Making Each Day Matter
Resolutions from the Task Force on Meeting Individual Needs
March 11, 2005
After our initial review of last year’s parent survey, articles in the professional literature, and much discussion, our task force has come up with the following observations and resolutions regarding our practice:
We are committed to recognizing and building on what we are already doing well.
We are committed to an evolution in our practice; to change slowly and support each other as we move forward.
We are committed to learning more about differentiating within the classroom to help students learn in their own way and at their own pace, no matter how we group students.
We are committed to looking carefully at how we organize time for learning, including allowing necessary planning and meeting time for teachers since we recognize that differentiation will be time-consuming, especially at the beginning.
We are committed to keeping in mind that grade level and subject matter may require different approaches to meeting individual needs.
We are committed to increasing student involvement and responsibility for their own learning; keeping in mind that textbooks are guides to what should be covered, but that concepts and objectives may be met using a variety of materials and approaches.
We are committed to creating self-contained classes with homeroom teachers in grades 1-3, reducing the amount of student movement in grades 4 and 5, and evaluating the allocation of time in middle school, in order to meet individual needs within the classroom.
Just as we respect students’ different learning styles, we respect the fact that teachers will need varying amounts of time and varying types of support in order to expand their repertoire of skills and build upon their strengths.
We recognize the benefits of collaboration of colleagues and supporting teams as they work together.
In advance of the March meeting, one of our participants put together binders for the rest of the faculty.
After the faculty meeting, the following notice was sent home to parents by mail and in our Eton (electronic newsletter).
Dear Community Day Parents,
I am re-sending in hard copy some of the information that appeared in the April 15 e-ton. I wish to be sure that all our families are updated on our plans for next year for the increased attention to individual needs that is an essential component of our mission here at Community Day.
All the information that follows has been derived through discussion and study throughout the year. Our Task Force for Meeting Individual Needs is comprised of teacher volunteers who were interested in giving of their own time and effort to help us plan carefully and thoughtfully so that we preserve all that is great about our school and improve areas that warrant improvement.
The following people have participated in our Task Force for Meeting Individual Needs since October. They attend meetings every Tuesday morning from 7-7:40 a.m.
Barb Alsko
Melanie Brozek
Jackie Goldblum
Judy Goldman
Phyllis Harris
Ilana Inspektor
Sarah Bea Kramer
Tzippy Mazer
Avi Baran Munro
Sally Rafson
Lin St. Clair
Terry Steinberg
Laura Stone
Susan Tell
Stephanie Wolfe
Ella Ziff
This is the group that has taken a leadership role with me in exploring and reflecting upon our practice and in planning for the coming year. I cannot thank them enough for their time, their dedication, and their insight.
In February we began to summarize our findings and the following page reveals the resolutions upon which we all agreed. These were presented and discussed with the entire faculty at our full-day inservice on March 11 of this year. While your children were enjoying a day at home, we had a presentation from the Task Force, and spent the rest of the day learning with Dr. Karen Gazith, Director of Jewish Educational Services at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Education in Montreal. She has spearheaded this kind of transformation in twenty-five Jewish day schools in Montreal. Our teachers almost unanimously raved about the day and most felt better prepared for the upcoming changes after having worked with her. She will be returning in August for two more days of inservice training. Ongoing professional development during grade level meetings has been taking place in the past month and teachers will have continued opportunities to plan and prepare during the next few months and through the summer.
I know that you will have many questions as we move forward and I am available by phone or email to respond to your concerns. I am confident that our fine academic program will only be strengthened by this process, but I am aware that change can be difficult. I ask for your support and confidence as we move forward. Every adjustment we make to our program is with the express purpose of providing the best possible learning experience for your children.
B’Shalom,
Avi Baran Munro, Ed.M.
Head of School
Frequently Asked Questions About Next Year at Community Day
I heard that you won’t be having ability grouping in lower school next year. Is that true?
Yes. We have decided to have self-contained classes in grades 1-3, and modified self-contained classes in grades 4 and 5. These classes will not re-organize routinely for ability grouping. It does not mean that we will never have grouping by ability but when we do it will be within a classroom, or within a grade, flexible, and on an as-needed basis as determined by pre-testing and teacher assessment. This will also allow for less movement in lower school. The frequent classroom changes have been challenging for our younger students both emotionally and organizationally. Students will have more time on task and teachers will be able to extend learning if need be. For example, the way things are now, when the bell rings, social studies is over and students have to gather their things and go to math class. In a self-contained classroom, if the class is into a debate about the civil war and the bell rings, the debate can continue and more time can be given to math later in the day. Learning doesn’t have to happen in discrete chunks of 37 minutes, and often, it does not happen successfully in that amount of time.
Aren’t you worried about teaching a wide range of abilities in one classroom?
Many people worry that without ability grouping, gifted kids will be bored and students who need support will be overwhelmed. This is actually happening now, even in some of our ability grouped classrooms. Even with ability grouping the way we’ve had it, we have had to concern ourselves with students who needed acceleration and students who needed support. We have been adapting our lessons for these ranges of abilities to an extent already. What we are planning will actually enable us to target individual needs of students more precisely. In addition to heterogeneous classrooms in grades K-5, we are preparing to engage in more varied ways of teaching so that teachers will be able to work with smaller groups of students within the class in ways that will more immediately respond to their needs.
We will be doing more pre-testing and more frequent assessment and feedback to the students and to the parents so that we are certain not to be spending students’ time on things that are too challenging or not challenging enough for them.
Many of our teachers are already comfortable teaching this way and for those teachers who feel they need support in the classroom, it will be provided. We have already had one full day inservice on the topic and it is being discussed in our weekly grade level meetings as well. Professional development in the area of meeting individual needs is going to be provided as needed through the summer and throughout the coming years. Teachers will not be asked to do anything that they are not prepared to do well. Our teachers are very professional and very talented and they will be able to incorporate new techniques into their already broad repertoire of skills.
I hear you use the term differentiated instruction. What exactly do you mean by that?
Here is a helpful definition from the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) website at http://www.ascd.org (follow links to home -education topics- differentiating instruction).
At its most basic level, differentiating instruction means "shaking up" what goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learn. In other words, a differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquiring content, processing or making sense of ideas, and developing products. Specifically, differentiated instruction is:
- Proactive
- More qualitative than quantitative
- Aimed at offering multiple approaches to content, process, and product
- Student-centered
- A blend of whole-class, group, and individual instruction
Why are you making these changes? I like things the way they are!
It is considered best practice to differentiate instruction in K-8 schools. We have done extensive research this year (task force) and have visited various schools in our area including Falk, Shadyside, Winchester-Thurston, 0’Hara Elementary, Sewickley Academy, Colfax School and Boyce Middle School (Upper St. Clair). We have also visited Jewish day schools in San Diego and in Philadelphia. None of these schools group by academic ability the way we do (some do so in middle school math), and all are practicing variations on the theme of differentiated instruction. The Solomon Schechter Day School Association Principals’ Council supports differentiated instruction in all Schechter Schools. The National Association of School Psychologists has come out against ability grouping in elementary schools and has held this position for over ten years. There are academic costs to ability grouping but there are also social and emotional costs. Gifted students become very unwilling and unable to see gifts and abilities in students who are not smart in the same ways that they are. Students who traditionally end up in the lower ability groups often suffer from poor self-concept and are often expected to achieve less and therefore may in reality never achieve their potential. We are taking the best of the models we have observed and evaluated and will create a program that will work for our students and our school. Our goal is to challenge all students to achieve more academically and to become socially and emotionally adept as well and we believe that we will be able to accomplish much more along these lines in the coming years. The data from schools that are using methods of differentiated instruction show that there is increased achievement across the board for all types of students, including those who are gifted.
What about middle school?
In middle school we are also hoping to provide opportunities for more in-depth learning and exploration. A school-wide focus on writing will be emphasized in the middle school as we promote writing across the curriculum to prepare our students for a world in which writing skills are key to success and to self-expression.
Our goal is to create a schedule that will allow some longer blocks of time for learning in some subject areas, so for example, in science students may have two back to back periods twice a week and one single period another day. This would allow for more comprehensive experiences with labs and exploration.
The transition for middle school will be managed slowly in terms of ability grouping for the coming year. 6th grade language arts will be ungrouped. 6th grade math will be grouped by ability. 7th and 8th grade math and language arts will remain grouped by ability.
In terms of Hebrew, sixth grade will be ungrouped in both Hebrew and Judaic Studies and there will be team teaching in Hebrew. In 7th grade there will continue to be two groups (grade level and advanced) and there will be team teaching again (as there was for them this year). 8th grade Hebrew will remain grouped as well into grade level and advanced.
Judaics will be ungrouped throughout middle school. We are also trying to provide longer blocks in Language Arts, Judaics, and science so that more in-depth opportunities for exploration are made available to our students.
We think the opportunities for social interaction in classes will be broader and that all students will benefit from a fresh perspective.
The practices of differentiating instruction will be applied even within classes that are organized by ability. That is, teachers will be assessing more frequently, providing more frequent feedback to you and to the students, and student work will be designed to challenge students at their levels.
As you may know, Ms. Alsko is leaving at the end of this school year in order to start a tutoring business (and hopefully a family!). A new full-time middle school language arts teacher will be hired. Ms. Alsko, Mrs. Maya Inspektor and Mrs. Katz have also been working together with Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Hess in the 4th and 5th grade to evaluate our excellent language arts curriculum and make sure that we make the most out of the time the students have to spend in language arts. We will continue to work as a faculty to increase opportunities for writing across the curriculum and in our language arts classes.
How will we know what to expect next year?
We are planning a parent symposium to talk about four topics of interest to everyone… the plans for next year as discussed above, the Holocaust sculpture, the challenges of gender imbalances in certain grades, and our Bully Prevention Initiative. It is planned for June 1 at 6:30 in the evening. You will hear four presentations on the topics and then have the opportunity to break out into two sessions to further explore the two that interest you the most. If more than two interest you, bring a partner! Hope you will be there!
If you want to learn more about differentiated instruction, google it! A leading author is Carol Ann Tomlinson. We will not be instituting differentiated instruction across the board, but we will be adapting elements of the philosophy and approach slowly and carefully at a pace that will be comfortable for our students and for our teachers.
And of you, the parents, we invite your questions, and request your patience with our process.
Building Leadership Capacity in Schools
LINDA LAMBERT
(ASCD Premium and Comprehensive Member book, 1998) 6" x 9", 136 pages.