David Abush-Magder is the Head of the Middle School of Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco. A lifelong learner, he has a passion for empowering and enabling both student and teacher learning. After earning his PhD in Physics from MIT, his passion for Jewish Education convinced him to move from his position as a research scientist at Bell Labs. Gabrielle Nidus (www.formativecoaching.com) is Director of Instruction at Redwood Day School and has worked as a learning specialist at Brandeis Hillel Day School. She is the author of the Literacy Coach’s Game Plan and is the creator of Formative Coaching, a technique for school improvement and the building of a professional learning community.
This article explores adapting a traditional mode of Jewish learning to create to faculty interactions to create a uniquely Jewish professional learning community.
Think for a moment about the concept of a school professional learning community. Perhaps you picture teachers meeting on a regular basis, talking about instruction, sharing teaching techniques, articulating common goals, and integrating curriculum between disciplines. In this professional learning community, teachers have time to share important information about students; they follow their progress year by year and offer strategies to help learners. There is a consistent, open dialogue that continues throughout the year. Now imagine a school community that is composed of two distinct groups of educators who share students, classrooms, precious instructional time and yet rarely have time, inclination, or ability to collaborate. Though housed under one roof, it is often the case in Jewish day schools that teachers from the typical divisions into General studies and Judaic Studies feel as though they teach in an entirely different schools.
When attempting to establish a professional learning community (PLC), Jewish day schools not only face the regular hurdles that all schools encounter, but some that are unique to working in a school that promulgates both a religious and secular mission. Given that Jewish day schools have these unique challenges, should it not also be the case that the PLC in these communities have features that are different than other schools? Hence, the notion of the JPLC or Jewish Professional Learning Community, a community comprised of two sets of teachers grounded in the analysis of student learning in a “Jewish” way. At the core, a JPLC is built on the concept mikol melamdai hiskalti – we must learn from all those around us. In a JPLC, it is the act of studying together, a very Jewish tradition, that strengthens teaching and learning for both groups of instructors.
A way into conversations: Looking at student learning
The idea of a Jewish Professional Learning Community stems from the very specific needs and the unique position of a school that has at the forefront a mission that is multifaceted and goes beyond just academic learning. The nature of the religious and cultural mission in Jewish day schools affords the community unique opportunities to analyze student learning from a variety of lenses in a Jewish context.
Hevruta is a traditional approach to Jewish learning where learners work in pairs to discuss, debate, analyze, and make meaning of a shared text. In the JPLC, instead of the Talmud or other traditional texts, the team uses student work to spark discussion and learning. No matter the goals of the teachers or departments, the one aspect in every school that binds all teachers together is the students.
Student work is the byproduct of learning. It is the steps the student uses as s/he engages in an algebra problem, the interpretation of a Hebrew poem, the outline of an essay on Charlotte’s Web, a student’s Hebrew writing, or a piece of artwork in watercolor. This work serves as a gauge, or formative data, that informs the next steps for teaching and learning. Using student work as a basis for conversation between teachers can be a consistent practice that can build the learning community (Sadder & Nidus, 2009). While engaging in hevruta, pairs focus on both formal and informal assessments of learning and how this will influence their next steps for instruction. As the hevruta discuss students learning, they reveal the goals of their subject area, share teaching ideas, their philosophy of instruction and reinforce the ties that bind them together: the students they share.
This process of analyzing student work begins to build the foundations for a shared language of curriculum and instruction and opens the doors between classrooms and among the members of different departments, as they meet to understand student learning. Teacher learning is positioned in a Jewish tradition, encouraging the variety of perspectives, the spicy debates, the consensus and disagreements as teams analyze student learning to connect and energize teaching.
Student work becomes the concrete evidence of the mission of the school as it is lived and understood by the students. The building of hevruta is integral to the fulfillment of the mission of the school. While in many schools, the mission is a document that is filed away in the drawer, in a JPLC, the mission is at the forefront of teaching and learning and a main component of the discussion of the hevruta. The vision is the promise the school makes to the parents, students and Jewish community and therefore a necessary part of the collaboration between teachers. Bringing the vision to life is one of the main goals of a JPLC and is a sustained activity throughout the meeting of hevruta.
Utilizing protocols
While some hevruta may immediately be able to set to the task of looking at student work, most need some sort of guide or protocol to help them begin this process. Protocols are procedures that give direction to a conversation and explain the various roles of the participants. While some find protocols too prescribed, in a JPLC, protocols help teachers stay on task, make the analysis of student learning less personal, and provide a context for teachers to build relationships. Sometimes, JPLC’s are hindered by cultural gaps; what may have seemed appropriate in one community, in other contexts makes others feel ill at ease. Even without cultural gaps, individuals may feel uncomfortable sharing their perspective, while others may have problems ceding the floor and encouraging others to speak. Using a protocol is a way of balancing the playing field so that cultural and personality differences do not get in the way of looking at student work. Teachers are assigned roles and guided through the analysis of student work in a way that is respectful to both professionals as partners in inquiry. Protocols move teachers from statements such “I like” to one of noticing and inquiry. Typical protocols specify the time to be allotted for different portions of the discussion, a focus question, a format for presenting the context and goals of the student’s work, a structure for describing the student work, an opportunity for “probing” questions, and prescriptions as to how to provide and reflect on feedback. The Consultancy protocol , for example, provides helpful guideline to “ease the anxieties of revealing the heart of one’s practice to colleagues” (Cushman, 1999).
There are a variety of protocols teachers can choose from, however no matter which one is employed, as part of the hevruta, an additional element is to be added to every protocol. As teachers analyze the student learning, they are asked to reflect consistently on how this lesson can connect to the larger Jewish vision of the school.
Take for example the conversation of two teachers using The BEST Assignment Analysis Protocol (Sadder & Nidus, 2009) which guides teachers as they analyze a learning task and investigate the necessary sub skills in the assignment. This hevruta is composed of Ms. S, a second grade teacher who has brought her students’ bar graphs, and Mr. F, the 2nd and 6th grade Judaics teacher. After the team analyzes the students’ graphs and breaks the assignment down into its sub skills, Ms. S and Mr. F remark that the student who struggled might benefit by having something tangible to count prior to making the graph. Ms. S and Mr. F brainstorm together, and then contemplate if they can make any connections to the school’s Jewish vision of Tikkun Olam or helping repair the world. Mr. F offers a number of ways to place this lesson in a Jewish context – might they link math with the Judaic studies curriculum by asking children to create a bar graph of the number of canned goods collected by each grade as a part of their Tikkun Olam project? After a conversation, the team realizes that students might have the opportunity to practice Tikkun Olam daily by considering the ways students interact with each other in the classroom. Perhaps their common students can be asked to pair together more often and think of ways they can support their partner. At the end of the conversation, both teachers have come to the conclusion that they can concretely bring this vision of Tikkun Olam into their classroom by focusing on how they guide students to interact with each other. In a simple way, they have taken this large concept and applied it to both their teaching and learning environment.
Visiting your own classroom
As the hevruta become more comfortable, it is important to encourage them to go beyond discussing student learning to examining it in the classroom. It is often the case that general and Judaic studies teachers share the same classroom and yet, may not have had an opportunity to visit their classroom and students during the other teacher’s class time. For some, classroom visitations are associated with evaluation, but when the hevruta visit each other, the focus is on collecting data about the students and not about judging teaching. For example, a JS teacher might want to know how a particular partner group functions during their Hebrew reading time or she might want to capture students’ responses to the book she has chosen to read aloud. The general studies teacher would therefore help her partner by “scripting,” or writing down student responses which they would later share with each other as another source to center their discussions around in regards to student learning. The focus of the observations are not on whether a teacher likes a particular teaching strategy, but on collecting student data to use for further inquiry about student learning. At no point does a member of hevruta pass judgment or tell the other teammate what they should do. The job of the observer is to capture the data so that they can examine student learning from a new lens. After, the observer shares this data and the classroom teacher first listens, then share what s/he notices, interprets the information, and then makes instructional decisions. Finally, the team once again considers how this lesson can be related to the larger mission of the school. Unlike an evaluation, the observer is an active participant and should expect to learn something in regards to their own teaching and student population.
Steps for visiting a classroom:
- Ask a question about student learning
- Hevruta decides how to collect data on the information
- Observe and collect data
- Classroom teacher reviews collected data and shares what s/he notices
- Classroom teacher makes interpretations and instructional decisions
- Hevruta looks for connections in future lesson to the mission of the school
- Observing teacher reflects on how this observation affects his/her classroom instruction
Choosing a collaborative staff
In a JPLC, the teachers with Judaic knowledge can and should be able to help their colleagues understand how specific Jewish themes and ideas can expand and connect to the various academic disciplines. The knowledge Judaics teachers bring to the table regarding Jewish texts, law, history and culture is integral. Consider this moment, when a group of third grade teachers Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The General studies teachers constructed their unit to engender a student learning around themes of renewal, perseverance, and resilience. The Judaics teacher immediately began to make connections to Jewish History. The conversation continued and the teachers began to ask how they could help their students more deeply understand and reflect on the notion of resilience in their own lives and that of others. As the Judaics teacher explained the notion of resilience in Judaism, the General studies teachers saw ways in which they could enhance the specific unit, as well as their student’s skills, and the school’s mission by weaving in other examples, both personal and historical into their student’s learning.
Choosing teachers who are excited by the opportunity and see the need to making connections between secular and religious studies is necessary as you weave together your JPLC. Through the JPLC, school communities have the opportunity to enrich all of the teachers’ practice and experience by giving them the opportunity to share varying opinions and expertise, and engage in energetic debates. This style of learning and dialog remains a key component of both traditional and modern Jewish culture, one which both teachers and students are fortunate to be able to participate in during their years at a Jewish day school. Most importantly, the JPLC engenders and models a key learning outcome for the students: the need to create an authentic Jewish life in our modern world. By having teachers engaged, alongside their students, in wrestling with both Jewish and secular approaches to key issues, our students will benefit from the creative tension required to weave these perspectives together into whole cloth.
Celebration
Rabbi Tarfon in Pirkei Avot famously said “It is not up to you to finish the work, yet neither are you free to desist from it.” A JPLC is not something one builds one year and then remain stagnant. Instead, it is in a state of constant motion and action. Each year, the JPLC must be developed and nurtured in new directions. When teachers are meeting, sharing, agreeing and disagreeing about student learning, confronting and confirming the mission of the school, then the JPLC is alive. As this process begins, schools often realize how much work they need to do, whether it is to vertically align their curriculum, foster relationships between teachers, rewrite their mission statement, increase academic rigor, or learn how to analyze student work.
Noticing the progress and changes in the community becomes of utmost importance in an entity that is always striving for improvement. The regular routines, keva, of engaging in JPLC learning build towards meaning and intention, kavvanah. Each step towards building community, however little, is important, and while it might not feel noteworthy it is important that ongoing work be noted, nurtured, and celebrated. Often those at the helm of school change may be aware of the incremental differences but become too busy to share it with the staff. Perhaps this year, the hevruta met more times or teachers were able to “visit” and help their partner collect more data on students. Maybe teachers found more ways to connect their lessons to the Jewish vision of the school. Celebration and the marking of change is a key component to the success of your JPLC. In Judaism, there are many celebrations throughout the yearly cycle. Similarly, we must regularly celebrate the big and small steps of the JPLC. And of course keeping within Jewish tradition, we always make sure every celebration has lots of time for food and lively talk.
References
Cushman, K. (1999). The cycle of inquiry and action: Essential learning communities. [Electronic version]. Horace Journal, 15(4).
DuFour, R. (2004). What is a “professional learning community?” Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6-11.
DuFour, R. & Marzano, R. (2009). High-leverage strategies for principal leadership. Educational Leadership, 66(5), 62-68.
Little, J. W., Gearhart, M., Curry, M., & Kafka, J. (2003). Looking at student work for teacher learning, teacher community and school reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(3), 185–192.
McDonald, J., Mohr, N., & McDonald, E. (2003). The power of protocols: An educators guide to better practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Sadder, M., & Nidus, G. (2009). The literacy coach’s game plan: Making teacher collaboration, student learning, and school improvement a reality. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.