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Creating
High Performing Learning Communities
If we are not careful, high test scores are likely to delude us into thinking that proficiency ratings indicate high levels of student learning. In the same way, we can also convince ourselves that a regular book study, a bimonthly leadership team meeting, and some great pictures of faculty talking to each other, mean we have a high performing learning community. Beware of deceptions. While all of the above may serve as indicators that we are on the right track, high performing learning communities that provide the context for significant student learning school wide (and year after year, regardless of population shifts) are much more than a set of structures, routines, discussions, and good feelings. We need to be clear on what, high performing learning communities are, how to create and sustain them, how to monitor our growth as members of them, and how to generate new ideas, innovations, and rigor, drawing on our collective knowledge and experience. Ultimately, how do we create learning communities that reflect a culture of evoking excellence in each other? An important first question for a school team intending to create a high performing learning community is "What are we trying to accomplish?" For student learning, we answer that question with state standards for what children should know and be able to demonstrate. As Cornerstone schools, our plans for student learning are guided by a literacy framework that exceeds most state standards and, in a very straightforward way, tells us what the accomplishments look like in terms of student outcomes. But what are the standards or guiding principles that help us understand what a high performing learning community is and what it can accomplish? A number of good books will help you think about your response to that question: Inside School Improvement: Creating High Performing Learning Communities (Walsh and Sattes), Professional Learning Communities at Work (DuFour), Getting Started: Reculturing School to Become Professional Learning Communities (Eaker). Those are just a few for starters. The important thing, however, (remember The Important Book from the summer institute), is not to choose one set of principles over another as a "best answer," but to use these resources to inform faculty discussions around the questions: "What are we trying to accomplish as a learning community? What do we want as our outcomes?" When we simply choose somebody else's work as our blueprint, we miss the conversations and powerful opportunities to create something uniquely our own. The conversations are as important (often more important) than the principles we eventually set to paper to light our way. Once we begin to articulate what we want to accomplish, we may want to consider some what ifs to move us from intention to action-- What if as an important part of becoming a learning community we engaged the faculty in some work that honors the expertise and commitments they bring to the table, but also prepares them for a new way of thinking about participation in a learning community. Here I am drawing on James Flaherty's book, Coaching-Evoking Excellence in Others, and what he identifies as three domains of competence necessary for accomplishing anything of substance. Instead of simply developing some group norms, what if we introduced these three domains to our faculty as examples of practice.
We do not create high performing learning communities by simply calling the group together and expecting significant contributions from people struggling to find their way like a foreigner in a strange country. We acculturate our colleagues for participation in a community of learners. What if we reviewed the adult learning already in our progress in our schools and looked for opportunities to make it more rigorous. Most schools now have book studies occurring on a regular basis. What if we studied Socratic seminar and other forms of discussion, chose a few books with themes to wrestle with in addition to the great content literature we want to know better, and encouraged our best facilitators to take leadership rather than demanding that everybody take a turn at leading the study group? What if we asked more provocative questions of ourselves as we are participating, such as "What ways of seeing am I attached to or defending as I read this text? What impact has this discussion had on my thinking? How will this discussion and the ideas from this book study be reflected in my daily practice?" What if grade level teams or other subcommittees already established took on some major barriers to accomplishing school goals. What if the groups met to focus on just one issue for an entire meeting and used a tool similar to the one below to generate fresh ideas. Directions:
Remember, this is just one of hundreds of tools you
can use. The important thing is to structure a discussion that
moves your team from intention to action, What if monitoring school wide reform was a routine practice, and as one activity your team conducted a self-study, similar to a mini school review, to determine what practices are becoming embedded. "Data in a Day" is a strategy from Inside School Improvement by Walsh and Sattes. Again this is a tool, one you may want to use with School Review guidelines to develop your own method of data collection for grade level or full faculty study groups. " Data in a Day" is a 24-hour process through which a school can involve its entire community (that includes parents) in a self-study. It is flexible and can be adapted for many purposes.
Students
are more likely to be high performing if the adults with whom
they work are high performing. In any school,
pockets of excellence may occur because of individual initiative,
but learning communities don't just happen on their own. Sources |
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