Rabbi Barry Kislowicz, Ed.D. is Head of School at Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland, OH.

Barry Kislowicz reflects on how disappointment with the results of an in-service led to the emergence of a dramatically different model of professional development in his school.

As a new principal I was more than a little excited to run my first in-service day. I spent hours preparing my presentations, worksheets, teacher activities and handouts on my favorite topic: moral education. I even included an extensive annotated bibliography and articles for further reading.

The program on in-service day went exceedingly well. New and veteran teachers enjoyed the program, engaged with my presentations and completed the worksheets. I received positive feedback from many of the teachers, and I felt great about the learning we had accomplished together.

That positive feeling stayed with me until a few weeks later when I checked back with several faculty members to see how our learning that day had affected their classroom teaching. The good news: Most of them remembered the topic of our in-service training. The bad news: They stared at me blankly when I asked how they had incorporated my seminar into their teaching. Most of our faculty did not realize that there was any expectation that an in-service learning day would actually change the way they taught!

After tending to my bruised ego, I reflected on my failed attempt with Maury Greenberg, then Director of Professional Development for the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. Maury was not surprised by the results of my effort. In fact, as I came to learn, research conducted by the National Staff Development Council (2009) and others demonstrates that standalone in-service training very rarely impacts teacher practice in the classroom. We would never expect a child to learn multiplication from a day-long seminar; instead we provide appropriate introductions of the new concept followed by opportunities for repeated practice. The same must be true of the learning processes we construct for our teachers.

From short to long term

We moved forward with a number of attempts to create such long-term learning opportunities. These ranged from establishing critical friends groups within our faculty, to creating discussion and study groups on writing across the curriculum and classroom management techniques. These on-going efforts to provide in-service learning were indeed more effective than my one-day seminar. A number of them even persisted for several months. None of them, however, remained strong and vital for an entire school year. In each instance the story was similar: Teachers were interested and energized by our introduction. They entered into the learning experience with the best of intentions. But as the learning unfolded they found it more and more difficult to devote time to these endeavors, even when release-time was offered. Many also found that the chosen topic did not hold as much promise or relevance to their teaching as they had originally hoped.

We knew that we had turned a corner by shifting our focus from standalone professional development seminars to ongoing teacher learning. Yet with all of the daily pressures teachers faced that change alone was not enough. At that time our school was embarking on a broad strategic planning process which included an educational plan. With long-term planning in the air, we decided to take a multi-year approach to enhancing our faculty’s professional learning.

The key to our approach was to once again flip our perspective; to take what we knew about best practices in student learning and apply that to teacher learning. We have all seen teachers focus intently on introducing a new approach in their classrooms while neglecting to lay the proper foundation for success. These teachers take a strategy such as Project Based Learning and jump in with both feet. They hand out the project outlines and expectations to their students having given them little or no prior preparation, expecting to sit back and watch the students produce excellent work. What follows, however, is significant student confusion, lack of motivation, and projects that do not meet the teacher’s high expectations. While we can easily identify this common teacher-mistake, we were making the identical mistake by throwing our faculty into extended learning opportunities with high expectations yet weak foundations.

From the group to the individual

Rather than beginning with a large group, we believed that we would be most successful in creating lasting change by starting at the level of the individual and building outwards. Our first step was to reexamine our school’s supervision program. At the time, our supervision program consisted of one or two observation cycles followed by an evaluation. Analysis of the program revealed that it was designed to be a quality-assurance and evaluation mechanism with no attention paid to teacher growth opportunities. We realized that if we wanted to shape our teachers’ attitude towards their professional development our supervision process needed to exemplify the value we placed on teacher learning.

Rather than simply providing a mechanism for evaluation, we used Danielson and McGreal’s (2000) approach as the foundation for a supervision program that would ensure quality instruction in all classrooms while concurrently stimulating and supporting teachers’ professional growth. We used the term “Developmental Supervision” to describe a model which recognized that teachers had different needs depending on their levels of training and experience. While our new model still included multiple observation cycles and an end-of-year summative evaluation, the entire process was framed by a focus on teacher-chosen goals for professional growth. These goals, formulated in conjunction with an administrator, determined the focus for observations and ongoing discussions between each teacher and his or her supervisor. The goals also allowed for the collection of data that extended beyond what could be gleaned from a typical observation process. For example, a teacher intending to enhance her use of visual aids might keep a picture-log of visual aids used in a given class over the course of a semester. Whereas our previous approach would have exposed the supervisor to a small number of data samples collected only during observation cycles, this ongoing collection data enlarges the sample size to form a basis for meaningful reflection between a teacher and her supervisor around the teacher’s chosen professional development goals.

Once we had formulated our Developmental Supervision process, we engaged in a year-long training process for both teachers and supervisors to enable them to approach the process as a professional growth opportunity. We knew, for instance, that we could not assume teachers knew how to formulate appropriate goals or data collection methods, and so we provided them with intensive training session on SMART goals (Conzemius and O’Neill, 2006). Similarly, we realized that administrators experienced in the quality assurance mode of supervision would need to make a paradigm shift to see their role primarily as the facilitators of teacher learning. We therefore established a regular facilitated meeting of all supervisors in the school in which they could share their experiences and learn the skills necessary for a developmental approach to supervision. Because this new approach demanded significant amounts of supervisors’ time, we utilized select senior faculty members to serve as supervisors alongside our administrators.

Our first year with this new approach to supervision was highly successful. Over 90% of our faculty successfully followed through with the collaborative, professional growth process. That is not tosay that 90% of them achieved the goals they had set, but rather that they engaged in the process of goal-setting, data collection and collaborative work towards their own professional development. Teacher and supervisor feedback on the new program was highly positive. Just as important as the growth we saw in individual teachers was the growth we saw in the school culture. Teachers now knew that every faculty-member (including administrators) had his or her own professional growth goal. Discussions of goal-setting, data collection and professional growth, became commonplace.

Of course there were a few resistors, as with any change, but the momentum was with those engaging in the new program and there was a palpable sense of learning that now permeated the faculty culture.

Building cohorts

With this foundation in place, we felt that we could turn our focus back to faculty-wide professional learning. Once again, we turned to Maury Greenberg and the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland (JECC) for guidance. In an effort to ignite professional learning in schools, the JECC offered a professional development grant to schools which chose to institute a professional learning community approach (Killion and Roy, 2009). (Jennifer Truboff, Maury Greenberg’s successor as JECC Director of Professional Development, has continued to implement this approach by increasing annually the grant funds available to promote professional learning communities.) As we learned more about professional learning communities, we began to understand them as a group-level outgrowth of the development supervision process. Just as we had allowed teachers to choose their own professional growth goals and chart a path to pursue those goals, we believed we could now charge teachers to come together in groups led by a teacher-facilitator in order to pursue their own professional learning.

Unlike our mandatory Developmental Supervision program, we chose to establish our professional learning community groups (“cohorts”) on a voluntary basis. We shared the program outline with our full faculty, and allowed teachers to volunteer to facilitate a cohort. If we thought a particular teacher would make significant contributions as a facilitator we extended a specific invitation to that individual as well.

Cohort leaders were given a set of six basic guidelines:

1. Cohort teams will meet bi-weekly throughout the year.
2. An administrator will meet with each facilitator four times during the year, including a beginning of year meeting.
3. Each cohort will begin by creating an action plan to guide their work and assess their success. This action plan must include collection and use of data to guide the team process.
4. Cohorts should frame their primary goal around improving student learning, and they should assess their success primarily on this basis.
5. Select cohorts will share their work with the full faculty during in-service days.
6. Cohorts will have the option to request funding to support their work. Such funding can be used for substitute teachers to enable class visits or off-site full-day meetings, for learning materials to be shared with the group, seminars, etc.

It is important to note that within these guidelines teachers were given significant freedom in choosing their area of study as long as it fit within the school’s broad philosophy of education. These ranged from exploring student-centered learning techniques via action-research, to experimenting with alternative curricular approaches, to piloting new forms of educational technology.

The only two “incentives” given for cohort participation were (a) a token stipend provided to each cohort facilitator and (b) access to funding to support their work. During the first year of the program six cohorts were established and 25 of 47 potential teachers in grades 1-12 chose to participate, a 53 percent participation rate. By the third year of the program, 2012-2013, eight cohorts were functioning on an ongoing basis and 33 of 45 potential teachers in grades 1-12 chose to participate, a 73 percent participation rate.

When asked about their decision to participate, teachers cited the benefit of learning from their colleagues. Cohorts benefited from the availability of new curricular, resource and learning materials. However, the most valuable use of this funding was to provide release time to enable them to observe one another’s classrooms and to meet together for extended work sessions. As a result of the cohort system, discussion of group-based professional learning has become commonplace. When they hear of a new concept or wish to explore a new area it is natural for teachers to request that a cohort be established to research and explore. Requests from teachers engaged in shaping the process last year included:

“PD should be a basic contractual obligation for every teacher”
“All teachers should observe each other’s classes”
“We should have more time to work together”

New directions

As the value of ongoing individual and cohort professional learning has become entrenched in our school culture it has provided us with the foundation to expand our learning in new directions. In 2012-2013 we sought to improve the planning process for our two annual full-day in-service programs. In previous years the school administrators would simply meet together to determine what programming should take place. With our cohorts in place, however, we had developed a cadre of teacher facilitators with whom the administrator could collaborate to elevate the in-service program. Similarly, we recently sought to introduce a formal new teacher induction program with the support and guidance of Yeshiva University’s Institute for University-School Partnership. With our cultural foundation in place, it was now realistic to introduce a cohort designed specifically for new teachers as well as one designed to train current and future mentors.

On a school-wide level, our cohorts provide the opportunity for ongoing growth as well. While we continue to allow teachers significant freedom in determining the focus areas and projects for their cohorts, the increased collaboration which has developed within and across cohorts and divisions of the school has led to a greater degree of common understanding and shared educational vision. In reviewing the goals of each cohort one repeatedly sees common threads emerging. In addition, when we want to expose our faculty to a new initiative we now have a vehicle for doing so effectively. For example, as we consistently work to enhance our focus on 21st century skills we have the ability to introduce a new approach to our full faculty which they can then continue exploring and piloting through the mechanism of their cohort groups.

As we now proceed through the fifth year of our path toward professional learning, it is gratifying to reflect on our progress through this journey. We have come to understand that learner-centered, collaborative professional development based in a culture of individual and collective growth is the key to our progress. We understand as well that being a learning school implies continued effort and ongoing struggle to catalyze continued progress. Most importantly, though, we recognize that by engaging in this challenging quest to perpetuate our own learning we pave the path for our students to do the same.

*Our journey towards professional learning would not have been possible without the support of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, and its current and past Directors of Professional Development Jennifer Truboff and Maury Greenberg. Similarly, we owe a debt of gratitude for our teacher induction program to Shira Lowenstein and Yeshiva University’s Institute for University-School Partnership.