This article was written as part of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education Masters in Education Leadership Program. For their Capstone Project, all members of the cohort identify a problem of practice within their sphere of influence and use improvement science to identify solutions and achieve measurable gains.
M and I had been colleagues for over 14 years, but never in our careers had we ever co-taught in front of seven other colleagues. And yet on this day, we were. M’s fourth-graders were buzzing as they worked in pairs to solve the math problem M had just presented to them. The other educators in the room circulated and listened in as students used academic language to discuss their answers with each other, jotting down notes about what their partner had said and the language they had used.
“Did you say equivalent? I’m going to use that word, too,” said one student to another. One adult called out to me, “Would it be alright for partners to scribe for each other as they’re sharing?” prompted by an observation of a student needing that layer of support. “Great suggestions,” M and I answered in sync, then let all of the students know they must discuss first, but can support each other as they take written notes about each other’s thinking.
Another adult’s voice rang out, suggesting that student pairs who were finished could stand back to back, so we would know when to move on. M and I were grateful for the suggestion, as we were having a hard time navigating who was on task and who was discussing recess.
M called the class back to her attention, then paused and said, “This is the part I need some help with. Can you help me here?” Tag… it was my turn to teach this part of the lesson.
M and I were co-teaching as part of a professional learning session with demonstration lessons, a structure that allows educators to deliver, watch, and comment on lessons “in public.” It was exhilarating, it was scary, but most of all, it was educational.
I’ve been in the role of District Resource teacher within my organization since 2018. After each professional learning session, a typical feedback question is, “What further support would be beneficial to you and your students?”. The most frequent answer, “more time to plan and process” is outside of our sphere of control. The next most common answer is “I’m sure I’ll have questions once I try it out,” which is something my small team and I recognized we have influence over.
In order to meet this need, we shifted our professional learning to include opportunities for participants to “try it out” in their own classrooms during the professional learning session, just as M and I had in her classroom.
In traditional professional learning sessions, taking the next step to put the theory learned about into practice is a hurdle for many teachers. This practice cannot happen outside of the classroom; we need authentic practice in the actual arena we work in. As discussed in their 2000 book, Jeffery Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton call this a “knowing-doing gap.” You’re aware of this gap—remember when you read the driver’s training manual but hadn’t been behind the wheel yet? You know how the car works and what’s supposed to happen, but that first time you put your foot on the gas—woah! That’s why there’s a practice piece of learning to drive, when you’re in the actual car, not just reading about it. You need to apply theoretical knowledge in actual life, with supportive feedback. Prior to this year, teachers have been left to fend for themselves after professional learning (PL) sessions. Those who actually had the capacity to try it on their own were practicing new strategies, reflecting, and making adjustments mostly by themselves. In other words, they had no time to practice driving, and it was causing distress.
Why not make our professional learning sessions a “driver’s training” course that would hit the road, instead of purely theoretical modeling with adult learners? Since we couldn’t build a systematic approach to support teachers with application and feedback after attending professional learning, we would build the support and practice into the actual sessions themselves. In 2022, Madeline Will wrote it is evident that teachers learn from each other and by promoting collaboration and coaching-which includes demonstration lessons and co-teaching lessons-classroom instruction improves, which in turn improves student outcomes.
We chose to work in cohorts of eight grade-level colleagues and chunk our learning into four, half-day sessions, building towards an opportunity for authentic practice with their own students followed by meaningful feedback from their colleagues. We would be at school sites and in classrooms, rather than the central, district office location for our four sessions. The focus of our learning together was how to increase and support academic discourse in math, particularly for multilingual learners.
Each group of eight teachers was spread across the sites in our district, with some sites having their full grade level teams together, and other sites having only one grade-level team member represented. In light of this, our District Resource Team knew we needed to actively build upon existing relationships and deepen the trust between the cohort members. In their article, “A Matter of Trust,” Jill Harrison-Berg et. al. cite Megan Tschannen-Moran’s book Trust Matters regarding how vital trust is for adult learners to advance change. “When there is trust, people are willing to cooperate with and learn from one another…Teachers won’t take the risks required to go beyond what is safe or make themselves vulnerable enough to aspire to ambitious goals without trust” (2018). We designed an opener that allowed colleagues to speak with less known colleagues, and named that we were dedicating more time to this, so we would feel comfortable in our risk taking together. We also watched James Nottingham’s video about The Learning Pit, and let the participants know that one teacher would win a “Pit Prize” after each session, by showing active risk taking as we were all public learners together.
We grounded our learning in reading “Principles for the Design of Mathematics Curricula: Promoting Language and Content Development” from Jeff Zwiers et. al. from the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity. The article highlights instructional routines that specifically promote academic discourse in math. Our team specifically wanted to highlight Stronger and Clearer Each Time, which takes the academic conversation into writing in math. After we read about the instructional routine, all 8 teachers went into one of their classrooms to watch me do a demonstration lesson…with actual students, in the actual grade level they teach, at an actual school in their district. In the first lesson I modeled using Give One, Get One, Move on to increase paraphrasing and listening skills, which is the precursor to Stronger and Clearer Each Time, which was demonstrated in the second lesson. It was an important piece for us as facilitators, to model the lesson first, assuring our colleagues that we would not ask anyone to do something we would not do ourselves. The second session added onto the first, with one of the teachers in the PL cohort hopefully volunteering to co-teach a new instructional routine with one of the District Resource teachers. During sessions one and two, the eight cohort members were not necessarily teaching during the demonstration lesson, yet all observed and interacted with students during these lessons, and some shared suggestions or “took the wheel” spontaneously.
The immediate feedback about the change in format was positive. When asked “What worked well for you in this session?” 72% of the open ended comments were specifically about seeing the routine in action with students. One teacher wrote, “The demo lesson was a nice change in PD because we were able to see the lesson in real time.” Additionally, when teachers arrived at session two, the majority of them shared that they had tried the routine that had been demonstrated in the first session with their own students. Cohort members shared successes and questions that came up from their spontaneous practice, which led to rich collaboration and discussion as we started session two. It was also unique in that our District Resource team had not previously heard a majority of teachers sharing about trying out learning from a PL session.
For the third session, teachers planned collaboratively in pairs with support from their whole cohort and our district resource teacher team. They were getting ready to take their car out on the freeway. They planned a math lesson that incorporated one of the new instructional routines we had learned about from Zwiers. Of note, several teachers chose to teach with colleagues at different sites, to push themselves further outside of their comfort zone. An palpable energy was building among the participants as they looked forward to their final session when they would all have a chance to practice as co-teachers in one of their classrooms. They excitedly ironed out logistics about which of their two classrooms they would be practicing the lesson in, sharing details about their students, and who would do what part of the lesson. Looking through the feedback forms after this session, our team saw that our content focus—support multilingual learners with Integrated English Language Development routines during math—was being internalized by participants. More importantly, we noticed several teachers building connections with colleagues and taking risks. For example, when asked what was reaffirmed, several teachers commented on how powerful opportunities to collaboratively plan are. Several comments showed how participants were developing confidence while trying new things, which is highlighted in this comment: “The baby steps I’m taking [are] still in the right direction.”
In the last session, each member had their typical sub coverage. One team member traveled to their partner’s class, where the two of them co-taught the lesson they had planned together. They were trying out the new instructional routine with each other’s support. They weren’t just learning about the theory, they were practicing the theory. Teacher pairs were taking the theory on the road, so to speak, to see how it felt when they tried it out with their students. After they finished co-teaching, the cohort came together to share and reflect on their co-teaching experience. As the teacher teams entered the room, there was a buzz of energy, maybe a little relief for some, but most of all, there was excitement. There was a high level of engagement as our adult learning community reflected together. This was an enthusiasm that I have not frequently witnessed as a participant or facilitator of professional learning. Both collaborative planning and co-teaching were identified by participants as the most valuable part of the professional learning series. One teacher’s enthusiastic feedback summed up the gist of all of the feedback: “Co-teaching was an invaluable experience & I wish we had the opportunity to do it more often!”
What caused our district resource teacher team to change our approach to professional learning was that our teacher colleagues were receiving professional learning that left them to fend for themselves. As our team shifted the adult learning to a “drivers’ training” model, we observed more engagement from participants, more contact from teachers for additional follow up support from our team, and 73% of participants felt they would likely continue the instructional routines they had practiced and applied in our professional learning series. One teacher said, “I’ve got to keep this going!”
And they have. Our team started the year with emails asking for support in implementing the new instructional routines practiced last year-from collaborative planning to being a thought partner to co-teaching. For instance, one teacher emailed us the second week of school on behalf of their team: “I am excited for Tuesday’s lesson. When could you touch base?… I would love to do a little run through with the problems” in anticipation of their team and a district resource teacher co-teaching the information gap instructional routine during the math.
Adults need time to practice and apply new learning. As designers and facilitators of adult learning, we must plan for that so educators are empowered to make positive changes to their instructional practice. This participant said it best, “I found that not only learning about the routines, but having seen someone implementing, and then trying it myself was very beneficial.”
Harrison-Berg, J. et.al. (2018). A matter of trust. ACSD, 75(6), Accessed through: https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/a-matter-of-trust
Will, Madeline. (2022, October). What works-and what doesn’t-in teacher PD. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-works-and-what-doesnt-in-teacher-pd/2022/10
Zwiers, J. et. al. (2017). Principles for the design of mathematics curricula: Promoting language and content development. Understanding Language/SCALE. https://ell.stanford.edu/content/mathematics-resources-additional-resources
Tags:
