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You
are here: The Impact of Collaboration, Assessment-Driven Instruction,
and Site-based Professional Development
on an Elementary School
In the midst of a shift from school to district control, newly established state standards, the recent implementation of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, and their disappointment over consistently low test scores, the teachers of Newport Heights Elementary found themselves writing a proposal for a grant that would improve teaching and learning at a grassroots level. The Northwest Initiative for Teaching and Learning, or NWIFTL, would provide resources for Newport Heights teachers to collaborate and conduct inquiry on student learning.
Little did these teachers realize when they wrote this grant that in the five years to come, NWIFTL would not only set the stage for conversations on improving student learning, it would also carry the school through significant transitions, establish a powerful, site-based professional development model in a district that was moving toward centralized decision-making, reinforce the power of collaboration and using student work to guide instruction, provide time for collaboration, and create a school community that supported and empowered young teachers like myself. My purpose in writing this article is twofold: to simply share my story as a teacher who stepped into a school that was in its third year of NWIFTL, and to share our insights on collaboration, assessment, and site-based professional development.
Newport Heights has had a long tradition of collaborative teaching and learning. Receiving a 'School for the 21st Century' grant in 1988, Newport Heights started its journey, looking at better ways for students to learn and teachers to teach. Among the innovative approaches adopted through this previous grant were providing time for teachers to collaborate by instituting a 4 ½ day week for students, implementing multi-age classes, including children with disabilities in the regular classroom, and establishing a foundation for effective site-based professional development and decision-making. This set the stage for everything the teachers at Newport Heights were going to learn through NWIFTL almost a decade later.
It was early September, 1999. I was just two weeks into my first year of teaching in a 4/5 multiage classroom with 31 students. Overwhelmed, I had been staying in my classroom until 11 o'clock every night since a week before school started. Fred, the custodian, who loved to share his political views with me always came into my room at a quarter to 11 and told me that, once again, I was the last to leave and to make sure I locked my door and set the alarm before leaving. One night, he came in and caught me looking at job openings on the Starbucks website. I admit that moving from student teaching to being a "real" teacher wasn't nearly as easy as I had hoped. I struggled with many things, including knowing how to meet the needs of a multi-age class with children who were gifted, significantly disabled, and everything in between, and knowing how to plan lessons that had anything to do with where these students were academically. To be honest, I was euphoric if I could just make it to first recess without any major discipline crisis.
One Wednesday afternoon, a few minutes after the last bell rang, Marian, our principal, announced over the intercom that our first NWIFTL meeting of the year was about to start in the library. She reminded the staff to bring samples of "student work" in the area of computation. I'm not going to say that I wasn't told about this earlier, because it's very likely that I was. I admit now that if it didn't have to do with something that very day, I wouldn't remember it. In truth, I actually had no idea what "Newiftull" meant. It wasn't until the end of the year that I figured that one out.
My peer coach, Terri, walked into my classroom with her selection of student work - a few examples at grade level, some below, and some above. She explained to me as best she could in a few minutes what I needed and we were off to the library. As we were walking down, I asked her why we needed all this student work and what we were going to do with it. She explained to me that our school had historically not done well in the area of computation on standardized tests and that the staff had chosen computation as a school/ NWIFTL goal the previous spring. The student work, she continued to explain, was how we figured out what our students were understanding and where they were struggling. By analyzing student work with our colleagues, we would be able to help each other identify what our students needed to learn which in turn would help us plan future lessons. At that time, it seemed like a lot of extra work, considering we had a district math curriculum that we were following and knowing that I was going to stay at school late again that evening, but I relented to experience and this obviously well-established school practice.
The NWIFTL grant was a professional development grant that had the following requirements: we set a clear and attainable school goal, we take time to meet as a staff, we use student work to guide our discussion and instruction, and, for accountability, we document our learning. By following these guidelines, NWIFTL provided funds to compensate us for our time spent collaborating, to purchase books and supplies that would help us reach our goal, and to pay for outside expertise.
NWIFTL meetings turned out to be the routine the entire year. We met once a month in and across grade level groups looking at two things: computation and differentiating the curriculum for diverse learners. By the end of the year, as the frequent nights of looking at Starbucks job openings and working on my resume diminished into mere fleeting thoughts, I began to understand what NWIFTL was all about and started to appreciate and eventually be amazed at the impact it has had on my school and especially on me as a teacher.
My initial impression of NWIFTL as extra work couldn't have been farther off. Over the course of the year, the focus on student work to guide instruction helped me with my earlier struggles around lesson planning. I learned to identify what students did and did not understand and to create lessons that would target those understandings. The excruciatingly time-consuming, random lesson planning evolved into more efficient, relevant, need-based lesson planning. By spring, my lesson planning time shortened, I was leaving school before dinner, and my students' academic achievement was noticeably improving. In addition, I learned how to collaborate effectively with my colleagues. We wouldn't meet merely to talk about logistical issues like field trips and bus duty; we brought student work to share and discuss. We shared our lessons and the objectives we hoped to accomplish through them. We talked about our gifted children and how we were challenging them in the math and writing. We talked about ways we were modifying lessons to meet the needs of our students with disabilities. Student learning was the focus. Collaboration around student work and using student work to guide instruction were essential.
At the end of that first year, after climbing a nearly vertical learning curve, I decided to take it to the next level. I joined the Newport Heights NWIFTL/ professional development planning committee. Coming off of a year of learning about effective teaching practices such as collaboration and assessment-driven planning and instruction, I was about to experience the other side of NWIFTL - creating, effective site-based professional development.
To set the stage, I must mention a few changes that occurred the previous year that had a tremendous impact on my second year of teaching, the fifth and final year for the NWIFTL grant. First, the district decided to implement half-day Wednesdays. This was a huge step taken by the district, ideally, to provide time for teachers to plan, collaborate, and attend district-run professional development. However, as aforementioned, Newport Heights had already established half days through their 'School for the 21st Century' grant which they had until I arrived. The year before I started teaching, Newport Heights experienced a year of intense community debate. A few parents were unhappy with the low WASL and ITBS scores and targeted the 4 ½ day student week as one of the causes. The debate over this issue culminated in a vote that would require 75% approval to keep the modified week. Eight votes short, Newport Heights lost its Wednesday half days. Although it might seem that reinstating half days a year later would have supported the collaborative work being done at Newport Heights, it actually made things more difficult, primarily due to the new union restrictions on what the school was allowed to ask of its teachers during those Wednesday afternoon hours.
Second, during my first year, we were caught in another huge community debate, this time over our multi-age class configurations. Again, I believe that the cause of the unrest emanated from low WASL and ITBS scores - low compared to a neighboring school. By the end of the year, after much research, multiple forums on multiage, and a lot of tears from the teachers who believed very strongly in multiage education, we decided as a school community to keep multiage at the K-3 level and institute straight fourth and fifth grade classes.
Third, the district implemented Lesson Study, a process of perfecting lessons through collaborative lesson planning, peer observations, and writing extensive lesson objectives. Becoming a major focus in the district, Lesson Study would inevitably compete with NWIFTL for teacher time and attention.
Fourth, the district was continuing its effort to adopt K-12 articulated curriculum in all the subject areas. Before my first year, they had already adopted a math curriculum. During my first year, they were piloting a science program and working with drafts of writing and reading continuums. With so much new curriculum, teachers spent most of their time out of the classroom learning the new curriculum and trying to figure out how their teaching would be affected.
Finally, in response to the seeming lack of community support in systems such as the 4 ½ day week and multiage that were established a decade before, many of the teacher leaders who had long been at Newport Heights including teachers who were instrumental in creating this collaborative learning environment and bringing in NWIFTL, retired or transferred to other schools. Between my first and second years of teaching, we experienced a 40% turnover in our staff.
All of these changes and occurrences, in their own powerful ways, carried with them the potential to deconstruct the collaborative nature of the school and undo years of work teachers invested in creating a community of learners. However, it was NWIFTL, in the end, that bridged the gap between the past and the future - between years of solid, cohesive teamwork and a year that was about to start on grounds of change, loss, and frustration. With its vision of schools setting site-based goals, teacher collaboration, and using student-work as an instructional compass, NWIFTL would carry Newport Heights through the transition and help establish a culture that both respected the past and embraced the future.
It was early September, 2000. I was just a couple of days into my second year of teaching in a straight fourth grade classroom with 28 students. I had one intense year under my belt and I was on the NWIFTL/ professional development committee. I was excited, full of hope, and ready to solve all of our school's problems. The past spring, after having great discussions about student learning, and after looking at our student writing samples and ITBS scores, we decided as a staff to make our next year's school goal 'expository writing'.
At the time we were deciding on this focus, we knew already that we were going to have eight new teachers join our staff in the fall, six of whom would enter as first year teachers. We acknowledged this, but weren't too worried about what that might do to the already established collaborative culture of the school. Heck, Newport Heights has been a collaborative, site-based decision making school since the 'School for the 21st Century' grant more than ten years ago. A few new teachers weren't going to change that. We'd just have to bring them into the culture of the school. So forward we went.
The NWIFTL planning committee met. We set the professional development calendar for the year, we ordered books, and we prepared for our NWIFTL kickoff meeting set for October 31, 2000. We would have had our first NWIFTL meeting earlier, but our district had just implemented Lesson Study and we were trying to learn about this complex process and how we were going to integrate that process into our existing school goals. For that first meeting, we planned to introduce an all-school expository writing prompt with scheduled, follow-up meetings when teachers would meet and score papers based on rubrics and anchor papers. To secure buy-in, we provided Starbucks coffee and presented the staff with an assortment of goodies.
To spare myself from reliving the horrors of that Halloween, let me just highlight the things my team learned about professional development that dark and menacing afternoon:
1) You really need to know what you're talking about when you're presenting something, especially if your audience is made up of tired, overworked teachers. We presented expository writing as our topic and attempted to explain what it is and how we were going to approach becoming better teachers of it. We realized within the first five minutes that we, the planning team, did not even agree on what expository writing is.
2) There must be trust and a sense of belonging built into the group. People need to feel safe and supported by their peers. With 8 new staff members, we clearly underestimated the impact such turnover would have on trust and a sense of belonging.
3) You need to know your group. Although we lost very strong and opinionated teachers, we gained teachers with just as much conviction. We didn't know them well enough to anticipate their feelings and thoughts on professional development and collaboration.
4) Teachers need to have their voices heard, especially in decision-making. Most of the dissenting voices were from new staff members who weren't part of the decision making process in the spring. A few of the dissenting voices were not from new staff members, but teachers who felt their ideas and opinions should have been elicited in the planning of the year's professional development meetings.
5) Timing is crucial. People can change their minds, especially when feeling overwhelmed and busy. October 31st was just a few weeks before conferences and report cards. Lesson study was taking more time than any teacher expected. New district assessments in math were implemented and a new science curriculum was adopted. Teachers were frustrated with their Wednesdays - some wanted more time on Wednesdays to plan and spend time in their classrooms, some wanted more time collaborating, and some wanted more time in district workshops. Wednesday afternoons were very unstructured and their use unclear. The teachers at Newport Heights were overworked and exhausted.
6) Site-based decision-making and professional development won't be successful in its purest form in a district that is making centralized decisions about process and content. Adjustments in site-based decision-making can and must be made to work efficiently and cooperatively in this type of a district. NWIFTL efforts seemed to be competing with district momentum, district projects such as Lesson Study, and district articulated curriculum, assessments and professional development. The teachers simply did not have enough time or energy to focus on both school and district goals and expectations.
7) A collaborative environment resides within people and not in a building. The teachers who left Newport Heights were leaders in collaboration and site-based professional development. When they left, much of the culture left with them. The remaining teachers simply weren't enough to keep this culture alive; the new teachers brought in many new perspectives and personalities, which had to be incorporated.
8) Finally, never schedule major staff meetings on Halloween. And don't think for a second that coffee and treats on Halloween would help increase buy-in. No one touched the donuts.Despite this early professional development disaster, we rebounded. Through intense reflection, discussion, and listening, the NWIFTL team, including the principal, refocused and capitalized on what we learned about professional development to move in a whole new direction that would meet the needs of every teacher, increase buy-in, and compliment the efforts of the district. By addressing the issues that surfaced that Halloween, we were able to use our NWIFTL grant to recreate a culture of collaboration and inquiry.
First, we decided to tackle the "buy in" issue. Understanding that our teachers were being pulled in many different directions, we knew that we needed to find a way to coordinate efforts. Our district has worked very hard to create an articulated curriculum in the different content areas. In addition, they have implemented a very strong professional development program that would support teachers in learning the new curriculum. This includes the Lesson Study process, which was intended to help teachers delve into lessons to improve their ability to write clear and appropriate learning objectives, to encourage collaboration and reflection, and to encourage teachers to use assessment to guide instruction and planning. As a school that valued these very same things, but worked on them at the grassroots level, we realized that by merely reframing the problem, what at first was a conflict became an opportunity to combine efforts and work collaboratively with the district.
Thinking out of the box, we created a modified, site-based professional development model that would function in sync with district efforts; we combined NWIFTL, Lesson Study, district professional development, and site-based inquiry into a single and optional Seattle Pacific University course entitled, "Action Research: Expository Writing in the Elementary Classroom. "
This distance-learning course, with our principal identified as the instructor, integrated the school-based, collaborative vision of NWIFTL with the district's collaborative and reflective Lesson Study process. It incorporated district writing workshops and also made use of NWIFTL funds for bringing in writing experts and purchasing writing instruction materials. These NWIFTL funds were available because we didn't need to use all of it to fund time since we had our half-day Wednesdays. The hours we spent with the NWIFTL-sponsored writing experts were cleared as district workshop hours and focused on the new writing continuum that was put out by the district. Teachers met in collaborative teams on Wednesdays to look over student work as they always have under the NWIFTL grant, but incorporated Lesson Study features such as researching best practices, writing out lesson objectives, and observing other teachers teaching the same lesson. Under the umbrella of expository writing, teachers were able to choose areas of focus that best met the needs of their students and of their own teaching.
By holding strong to our NWIFTL focus on student learning, incorporating elements of Lesson Study, making use of district workshops and curriculum specialists, and offering college credit which would contribute to continuing teaching contract requirements, we maximized buy in. Although this course was optional, 100% of the teachers participated in at least part of this inquiry process. Moreover, every teacher focused on some aspect of expository writing. Every teacher met with other teachers, whether it was a grade-level team or cross grade-level team, to look at student work and plan lessons collaboratively.
With the implementation of this modified professional-development model, we helped teachers be more efficient in the work they were doing this year allowing us to tackle the other challenges we faced that first staff meeting. For example, we knew we had an issue of not fully understanding what our school goal was. Expository writing. Who thought it would be so hard to define? Each teacher and each district resource had a different definition for it. A central element of the NWIFTL grant is identifying a school goal; we learned that identifying the school goal must go beyond merely naming it. We must understand the goal - what it is exactly that we are trying to improve.
Throughout the winter, we spent much of our time together defining expository writing. Although this may seem tedious and threatening to teacher morale, it in fact did the opposite. Through our discussions, through looking at student work and identifying expository writing elements, through reading resources purchased through NWIFTL funds, the teachers built relationships. We learned and relearned how to work together collaboratively. By springtime, we not only developed a strong, unified understanding of expository writing, we developed trust and belonging among the staff. From there, we set the stage to start working on writing rubrics, assessing our students' understanding, and finally planning lessons that would improve our students' writing.
In addition to appreciating the importance of having a clearly defined school goal and establishing trusting relationships, we learned that all opinions and voices needed to be heard. In order to avoid issues that threatened to stall our momentum, we expanded our NWIFTL leadership team to incorporate a wider representation of voices. By diversifying the leadership team to include more points of view, we not only avoided future conflicts, we also increased validity in what we presented to the staff. As a NWIFTL leadership team, we evolved to represent our staff more fully and had such diversity of voices on our team that we were better equipped to anticipate positive and negative responses.
Although we lost many teacher leaders that previous summer, in this last year of NWIFTL, we cultivated many future leaders. Many of the young teachers at Newport Heights, including myself, stepped up to carry on the work that was started by those who initially wrote the NWIFTL grant five years before and those who, over a decade before, were involved in the 'School for the 21st Century' grant. We learned to take initiative in our learning as teachers. Through the NWIFTL/ site-based professional development process of determining our own goals, working collaboratively with our colleagues, and using student work to guide instruction, we transformed from teachers into reflective, inquiry-driven teacher leaders.
It is no surprise that shared leadership was a fundamental piece of the NWIFTL grant. For site-based professional development to succeed, the teachers must be willing to set and carry the vision. Teachers must take the initiative to insist on using student work to guide instruction. Teachers must walk into their colleagues' classrooms to discuss and collaborate. Finally, teachers, themselves, must seek answers to self-generated inquiries. The teachers before me were committed to this and, through NWIFTL, I too learned to share the responsibility and leadership.
Almost two years after that notorious Halloween, I find myself sitting here at a Starbucks sipping a latte, reflecting on and writing about those two great years of NWIFTL that I experienced as a beginning teacher. I am still in awe at how much we learned at Newport Heights about teaching, learning, collaborating, and site-based professional development. During my first year of teaching, I learned about the power of teacher inquiry, collaboration, and the use of student work to guide instruction. I realize now how lucky I was to be in a school my first year that held such core values. I had teacher leaders around me who shared these beliefs and who guided me in maintaining a focus on the students. The NWIFTL grant helped create this environment for me and for the school.
My second year of teaching, the year I served on the NWIFTL planning committee, I learned about the effectiveness of site-based professional development. I thrived on what I learned about creating an environment of collaboration and reflection and the power of teacher-driven inquiry, even in a district where most curriculum decisions are made centrally. Moreover, I learned how important and valuable it is to work collaboratively with the school district. I learned to appreciate all of the voices of the staff and to never underestimate the need for trust and a sense of belonging. Without these pieces, significant work can't be done. Finally, I discovered that, not only do we have to assess our students' learning to inform instruction, we have to assess our own understandings and misunderstandings in order to create teacher learning environments that are sensitive to our specific needs and relevant so that teachers will support it.
With the NWIFTL grant now in the past, Newport Heights continues to set yearly school goals. The teachers still work collaboratively with each other and find ways to align their needs with district expectations and support. They are also continuing to use student work to guide their instruction. Although this school has touched on various content areas throughout its NWIFTL journey, the underlying themes of collaboration, assessment-driven instruction, and site-based staff development will continue to be ingrained in its teachers. The NWIFTL grant truly empowered the teachers of Newport Heights Elementary.
As for me, I will no doubt remember all that I have learned from NWIFTL and my colleagues at Newport Heights. Whatever school I work at in the future, and wherever my career in education takes me, I will hold firm to the NWIFTL vision. Understanding the effectiveness of a school with a focus on student learning, a staff that works collaboratively, a site-based professional development model that compliments district efforts, and an environment of trust and belonging, I have hope that I will continue to help create schools where learning is exciting and relevant for both students and teachers.
Kelly Aramaki is currently in the Danforth Principal Education Program at the University of Washington. He received the Kreielsheimer Fellowship from the Seattle School District and is interning at John Stanford International School. For the past three years, he was a fourth/fifth grade teacher at Newport Heights Elementary School in Bellevue. There, he was involved in NWIFTL and he co-facilitated the elementary component of the Advanced Placement Institute. Prior to teaching, he received his Masters of Arts in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City.
© December 2002 New Horizons for Learning
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