Turning Vision Into Action

Graduation, Equity, Access, and The Common Core

2012-05-25T11:11:00.001-07:00

Some thoughts today as we approach Memorial Day Weekend and our youngest daughter takes her high school Pre-Calculus final exam.

Last night, our friends (and neighbor) oldest daughter graduated from high school and the ceremony was a wonderful evening of celebration and reflection. The ceremony was held in a football stadium with the 400+ graduates sitting in chairs facing the stands - and very ready for the next phase of their life.

As I looked at all of them - the class of 2012, I couldn't help but connect them to the Conditions of Education Report released yesterday by the National Center for Education Statistics. Page 6 of the report provides some interesting High School data about these students. Here is some "access" data from the report:

There are about 14.9 million high school students this year and of those that are high school graduates:

88% will complete HS Geometry, 76% Algebra II, 35% Pre-Calculus/Analysis and 16% Calculus
96% Biology, 70% Chemistry, 36% Physics, and 30% all three of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

In all cases these "Access to the Curriculum" numbers (a major equity issue in high school) are significantly higher than 20 years ago. For example, only 54% of graduates had access to Algebra II, 7% access to Calculus and 19% access to all three of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. It is important to note as well, that these numbers are for graduates that received a carnegie unit for the course (IE: received a credit and passed).

Considering the Common Core era has established college and career readiness standards for mathematics that includes content through Algebra II and more, it is a very good thing that these access to the curriculum numbers are on the rise. And yet, as I watched the 400+ graduates last night receive their diplomas, I wondered how many of them would have been prepared for the assessment expectations of the Common Core in 2015. What a shame, it seemed to me, that on average only 30-35% of them nationally will have taken three years of science through Physics and three or four years of mathematics through Pre-Calculus - which describe and provide many of the high school Common Core "Plus" (+) standards by the way.

Equity requires access to the schools' college preparatory curriculum, and then it also requires a successful learning experience for every child once that access has been granted. Mathematics and Science for too long have been known in high school as the great selecting and sorting disciplines - after all, the "Hard" Sciences got that name for a reason.

The Conditions of Education report is good news in terms of access to the curriculum growth. But it is not nearly enough. High School Mathematics and Science teachers and school leaders must be willing to redefine the student learning and assessment classroom experience for every student in this Common Core era - the CCSSM and the Next Generation Science Standards demand we respond positively.

To that end, in Mathematics, I have worked with many of my colleagues to provide specific research affirmed support for a coherent and focused teacher response to preparing every child for the college and career standards and expectations of the Common Core. Titled Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work, High School - I invite you to take a look and see if it will be of support and use to you.

I will warn you that parts of the book will create a bit of cognitive dissonance for the teacher reader. It stretches us into new ways of thinking about how to address the successful learning of the high expectations of a high school college preparatory curriculum. It is not easy, but it will be worthwhile and needed - especially as more students than ever before gain access to Algebra II and Pre-Calculus courses that meet the expectations of all of the Common Core High School Standards.

And why mention Science? Because these same students will need access and success in the parallel courses they are taking in Science - and many of the teaching and learning, and assessing strategies in the book work for Science as well. I know this to be the case - based on my 8 years as Director of Mathematics and Science at Stevenson, and the many many lessons from Science that helped our Mathematics programs to improve.

Recently, I read an article in a local newspaper in which a school board approved "Lower level" mathematics courses for high school students. A move that essentially will deny certain students access to a college and career preparatory curriculum - essentially lowering the bar for these students - in mathematics and in science. This is not the PLC at Work way. In mathematics, the answer is never to select and sort the students into lower level classes. The answer is to keep students at level, give them access, and then give them the figurative "proper box of support" to stand on so they can meet those expectations.

I hope you are a fighter for access and a fighter for required intervention at all levels, all tiers as needed, that provides that support. Let us not go backwards to the 1990's. And let us also be realistic to the work that is ahead of us, and do the best we can - the class of 2015 is depending on it!

Another Season - Did It Matter?!!

2012-05-08T11:46:00.001-07:00

Whether with employees or with your kids, you can never take trust for granted. It requires time to build and has to be earned. The key is making sure other people feel respected without being judged. I try to help my children know who they are and help them feel good about themselves. What could be better than an environment of trust where people feel strong, know who they are, and know how they can contribute?

Marianne Toldalagi, former senior VP, American Express

The end game of the 2011-2012 school year and “season is almost here. It’s May and you can hear the footsteps of another season of your professional life coming to a close.

For some of the readers of this blog, you are also reaching the end game of raising your children (8^thgrade, high school, or college graduation is just right around the corner), or maybe the end game of your career (you might be part of the faculty and staff that retire in June) – and the then what of your life lingers in the shadows. Was it worth it? Did your work and effort matter? Did you raise your children wisely? Do you stand at the precipice of significant transitions and changes in your life with few regrets? Graduation does that to us. Retirement does that to us. Ending another school year does that to us – if we slow down long enough to look.

As you face the graduation of another class soon, the “end of the game,” moment always forces us to reflect and decide, did we waste our family time or professional time on stuff that doesn’t matter? Or did we, as parents and professionals, work together to build trust and integrity between each other and our children – our students — our peers?

Our youngest daughter is about to end 10^th grade. No take take-backs, no do-overs. Not from us as her parents and not from her teachers for this year. They got one crack at making a difference in her life. This will be the path of their story on her, and on 100’s of students just like her.

May and June call us to examine the path of our life story – with our students and with our own children. And the question becomes then, “On what will we base our success this year?” I suggest the you (and I) consider following:

Relationships: The building of relationships and community. Removing people from isolation and helping them learn to work together toward improved student achievement and character. Was there a social justice culture and pursuit created at your school in your programs that sought to erase hidden as well as more obvious inequities. did you pursue better relationships with kids and adults?

Trust: Did you build trust by listening, respecting and integrating the thoughts of others into your own belief system? I learned that trust building is a dynamic process that you must never take for granted. It was an exhausting, forever pursuit, but a worthwhile endeavor.

Clarity: To teachers, staff, parents and students, were you crystal clear — here is what I ask of you: Nothing less than your best effort is acceptable. Live a life of integrity, honor, academic effort, kindness, caring and compassion for others; and aim high. And know that sometimes, you will fail to meet these ideals.

As Marianne Toldalagi indicates in the opening quote, as parents, as faculty, as staff, as administrators judge the quality of this season of their lives, don’t point to the awards won, the money earned, the trophies on the shelf. Success in 2011-2012 and beyond exists and resides in the children who are now young adults carrying out the legacy of the next generation. The children walking across that stage in less than a month. And you (for good or bad) had a part in a chapter of their life story. I hope for you, your journey this year- this 2011-2012 season - was a good one.

Common Core Mathematics in a PLC!!

2012-04-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

Those of you that have faithfully followed my attempts at blogging my ideas over the past two years know that I am passionate about mathematics education and issues of equity – as viewed through the lens of school leadership and Professional Learning Communities. As highly effective PLC’s become the norm and the culture for the ongoing school embedded professional development in your school, they will provide the vehicle for delivering the successful implementation of the Common Core.

To that end, over the past year, I have been able to engage with thirteen mathematics education thought leaders/authors and more than 31 well respected reviewers to write, design and author a five book professional development series (which has taken away from some of my dedicated time to this blog over the past year).

The series is designed to help every school district and school based professional learning community collaborative team to successfully focus and implement the necessary mathematics instruction and assessment that will prepare every child for the Common Core expectations and assessments that are only a short three years away – this month.

The five book series – published by Solution Tree and co-published with NCTM, is built upon a theme of five fundamental paradigm shifts essential to a successful local launch into the Common Core for Mathematics in your school. You can read more about those paradigm shifts by downloading the summary from my most recent session at the Solution Tree Common Core and Assessment Summit this past week in Las Vegas.

This week, as the annual NCSM and NCTM conferences take place in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, the Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work™ Series will be launched with the grade level K-2 (includes issues of PreK as well) and Grades 3-5 books. As most of you know, there is a certain CCSS content “Landing point” by the end of 5^th grade as students launch into
middle school, so these two books, help to establish together the new expectations for elementary school teachers and programs. Led by Matt Larson, the authors for these two books in the series also include Skip Fennell, Juli Dixon, Thomasenia Lott Adams, Beth Kobett, and Jon Wray. You can learn more about these books, the online resources, etc. by clicking on the book covers to the right.

The high school, grades 9-12 book will be released by May 5th, the School Leadership book by June 15^thand the middle school, grades 6-8 book by early October. I will detail more information about these books as they are launched as well. For the most part, our work began last May, as early drafts of our effort to design professional development books that would be helpful to the reader (the teacher in the case of the grade level books, and school administrators, and mathematics leaders in the case of the leadership book) were written. Each book went through a national review, and more than 30+ drafts, as they began an extensive 10 month development process. I cannot thank the authors and reviewers enough for their time, dedication and effort to provide deep research affirmed guidance that can and should focus the work of your on site PLC teams over the next few years.

Perhaps the greatest compliment our series has received thus far, comes from the Foreword by Doug Reeves that will be in the Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work™, Leader’s Guide book for the series.

Perhaps the most notable feature of this book is not merely the competence of the content, but the underlying spirit of commitment to equity that pervades every page. The authors understand that we cannot outsource mathematical proficiency as we have outsourced manufacturing, for to do so would be to outsource our responsibility as educators and as citizens.

Their most inspiring guidance is contained in the pages that confront the issue every teacher has faced: What do we do when students don’t get it? How do we respond to failure? In too many schools, the response to failure in mathematics has been the acquiescence to failure, leading to the re-segregation of schools to a level not seen since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

If we are to confront this challenge, then we must heed the counsel that [the authors] offer. Our response to failure cannot be a continuation of divergent opportunities based on student background, but rather a commitment to equity that will prepare our students to think critically and lead boldly.

The intent of this book series is to support your CCSS mathematics teacher and leader work for equity, and to focus the work, time, and effort of your mathematics programs and collaborative teams on high-impact actions for improving student learning.

As a teacher and leader of effective collaborative teams (grade level or course based), you can make great decisions about teaching, learning, assessing and responding to learning that will impact student mathematics achievement. As Jim Collins (2011) indicates in Great by Choice, you may not be able to predict the future, but you and your team can create it. Your professional development goal should be to help every teacher and administrator make great decisions toward a great mathematics future for our students— every year, every unit, every day. We hope that our professional development guides will support that great future.

Checking Your Change Language!

2012-04-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

Embrace Risk-Taking Language

How is the idea of risk spoken about in your school? Take the time to notice the phrases about risk that individuals use. Examples might be “minimizing the risk,” “running the risk,” “reducing the risk,” “risk-prone,” “risk-averse,” “balancing the risks,” “spreading the risk,” “worth the risk,” “focused risk,” “fear of risk,” “risk excitement,” and “risky actions.” The central tenet of the PLC leadership response to failure, either student or adult, is a paradox:

To risk nothing is to risk everything.

To not try new things, to not create opportunities to fail, is to stop becoming a true learning organization.

Does your risk-taking vocabulary declare, “Let’s learn from our failures, let’s learn from our mistakes, let’s learn from our effort, and let’s grow together”? The PLC growth mantra should be, “We may not know how to do this new task right now, but together, with time and effort, our PLC team will learn how to do it and do it well.” And so will our students.

For example, take a close look at the cultural mindset of all tests and quizzes given in your school. Is your school a place where error and risk taking is embraced, expected and spoken of as a positive aspect of learning? Take a look at the language that is used by the adults and students in your school, anytime students and teachers make an effort to try... try to take action that is newer, harder, different means there will be risk. It is our response to that risk that matters most.

Ask, do the adult messages in our school promote or detract from a culture for focused and safe risk taking by the faculty, staff, and students? Is growth and improvement language a cultural norm in your area of school leadership? PLC leaders monitor for and promote positive risk-taking language. As we get into May, this is a good time of the year to reflect back, and assess the risk -taking language for your school community.

You can do a temperature check on the risk-taking emotions that are generally a result of the change efforts in your school. Are they positive or negative? Then look at the language people speak...it is never should we risk - it is how can we risk well? how do we minimize the negative emotions and maximize the positive emotions? And as importantly, how do we talk about it - every day?

Responding to Failure: From Policy to Practice!

2012-03-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

Embrace Risk Taking With Planned Abandonment

Last Friday I had the wonderful opportunity to participate with several hundred educational leaders and teachers at the 2012 CMP Mathematics Teacher Retention Symposium in Los Angeles. The 3-day symposium was filled with remarkable sessions about how Universities and School Districts can work together to create a coherent and well researched plan and action for the retention, support and sustainability of a well-prepared mathematics and science work force.

And as I have discussed before, it is not easy.

Creating a relational culture and the conditions that intentionally abandon bad practice (often revealed by data) and focus on coherent implementation of new practices is never easy. For those of you that attended my session on Policy at the symposium, you can download the PDF of the presentation materials.

So, in my last blog entry I suggested you take a deep look at your school and district’s coherent response to failure…. and mentioned that I would follow up with a few blog entries that would suggest specific ways to develop an effective response.

As PLC leaders respond to failure, they are willing to abandon old behaviors and programs that are not working well, hold onto the old that is working well, and make way for new actions and the new risks. Think of these actions as planned abandonment.

An inherent paradox exists in your risk-taking response to failure. You must take risks that both add to and abandon current practices. You take risks on new actions you add to the current “stuff” you are doing. You expand capacity urgently. For example, typical professional development in your school (the new risk-taking effort) might feel like this:

We will implement and train on the new problem-solving elementary school math program. We will also receive professional development training to help support our Tier 1 and Tier 2 RTI efforts in grades K–5. And everyone will implement last year’s literacy training for academic vocabulary as we continue our work with formative assessment building.

To assume this much risk taking requires an accompanying leadership plan for systematic abandonment of other work-related tasks. Are there any concurrent practices that no longer provide evidence of viability for success? Can you move efficiently to let them go? Ultimately, all adults in a professional learning community understand that failure should be embraced as part of the learning cycle. One of the greatest and most consistent mistakes that new-formed PLC cultures make is attempting to do too much all at once. Part of maintaining a healthy risk-taking culture is following a systematic plan to abandon ineffective practices as you and your leadership team take on new risk-oriented activities.

What makes team learning and risk taking more vulnerable than solitary learning and risk taking is that the former is so public.

Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) say it like this:

We wish it were possible to live in a world where mistakes, setbacks, and errors never happen. We despise our own failures, it wounds us when people we care about suffer setbacks, and we even find ourselves feeling bad for people we dislike when they make mistakes. Failure hurts, it is embarrassing, and we would rather live without it. Yet there is no learning without failure. As we’ve seen, there is always a learning curve when an organization tries something new or trains people—including doctors and managers—to do something new. If you look at how the most effective systems in the world are managed, a hallmark is that when something goes wrong, people face the hard facts, learn what happened and why, and keep using those facts to make the system better. (p. 232)

Professional learning communities are all about using the hard facts to make the school organization better. Your legacy is revealed through the school’s response to failure and its risk taking to close the gap on student and adult success. The discipline of inspiration and influence requires your intentional and positive embrace of learning from failure and mistakes in order to create a better “next year.” Such actions improve your chances of living with no regrets, especially the regret of leadership inaction, such as the regret I felt after waiting seven years to actually enforce student-engaged learning as a requirement in every classroom.

Admit and abandon failed practices, and begin to take risks on new research-affirmed actions today. Start your planning now for 2012-2013.

PLC Legacy Practice 1: Responding to Failure!

2012-03-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

What happens when people fail in your school?

I have the opportunity and privilege to work with a wide variety of schools across the country. I am often asked to provide feedback on the culture of the school, the implementation level of professional learning communities, or the level and quality of innovation and creativity by the adults in the school. As Pfeffer and Sutton in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense (2006) point out, the best diagnostic question a leader can ask is, what happens when people fail? What happens when teachers or teacher teams try an innovative idea that fails? What happens when students or parents fail to meet the expectations of learning? Here is what they said:

We concluded that when we wanted to learn a lot about a company quickly—wanted a fast hint about whether an organization’s leader had the attitude of wisdom, whether a company used practices that were supported by the best evidence, and whether conditions were ripe for turning all that knowledge into action, we both asked the same diagnostic questions: what happens when people fail? (p. 232)

A hallmark of professional learning community leadership is your intentional and positive response to failure at all levels of the school organization. The systemic, swift, and intentional adult response to any level of student failure is one of the four critical questions every PLC learning team must answer.

According to the allthingsPLC website - school leaders and leadership teams ask: “How will we provide students with additional time and support in a timely, directive, and systemic way when they experience difficulty in their learning?” Your ongoing leadership response to this question reveals the truth about how the school responds to the world of student misunderstandings, errors, and apathy to learning.

Student failure that is not used as part of a reflective learning experience hurts everyone. Your level of leadership tolerance for student failure reveals your wisdom in using student mistakes as a tool to improve the ongoing formative cycle of learning in your area of school leadership. Does the school culture embrace student errors, require students to become reflective practitioners, and require student participation in a formative assessment learning process? Intentional, required student participation in response to failure is a legacy-building practice of extraordinary PLC leaders.

In every school, there is also a parallel leadership response for adult misunderstandings, errors, and risk taking as well. Does your leadership inspire or discourage adult risk taking? Can adults within your N-S-E-W sphere of influence take risks, make mistakes, and learn and grow from those experiences without punitive judgment? The level of innovation and renewal success in your district, school, or program area of school leadership depends on the degree of focused risk a team is willing to take and the confidence of the team in your positive leadership response if failure occurs.

Carol Dweck (2006), author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, summarizes her decades of research around two distinct mindsets of response to failure. These distinctions help the PLC leader to better understand why some adults have a difficult time responding to failure. Adults with a growth mindset believe their “talents, aptitudes, interests and temperament can change and grow over time” (p. 7). Growth-mindset adults embrace learning team challenges and failure as an opportunity to improve. In contrast, adults with a fixed mindsetbelieve the qualities of talent, aptitude, interests and temperament are “carved in stone” (p. 6). These adults see every failure as an indictment of their worthiness. For fixed-mindset adults who believe these important qualities cannot be developed or grown, failure indicates permanently limited abilities or unworthiness as a faculty member or administrator in the school.

Dweck indicates that “the passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it is not going well, is a hallmark of the growth mindset” (p. 7). The growth mindset is a major premise of the PLC culture for adults and students alike as they move along in the flow channel described in chapter 4 and thus should be the focal point of the risk-taking measures a PLC leader should pursue. PLC leaders help those who are stuck in a fixed-mindset response move to a growth-mindset response to failure.

To help fixed-mindset adults become comfortable with learning from failure, inspirational and influential leaders promote and nurture a culture of risk taking. How well do you promote risk taking?

In future blogs I will reveal four risk-taking strategies and will provide a litmus test of your current legacy building and can be used to promote a growth-mindset culture.

Ready Set, Go! Resources for the Common Core

2012-02-27T09:15:00.002-08:00

Had a great week last week at the PLC Summit in Phoenix and so many wonderful educators interested in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and how to implement those standards well, within the context of a professional learning community. This Spring, 13 of my colleagues and I will be providing support for PLC implementation of the Common Core in our new professional development book series for teacher and leaders, Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work. The 4 grade level books and one leadership book in the series are being co-published with NCTM and will begin their release April 23-27^th at the national meetings in Philadelphia.

I will write more about this exciting release in March, but in the meantime I wanted to use today’s blog to direct you to some useful websites and resources for further investigation into information about the common core and its potential impact on your school district. I have also attached the powerpoint presentation in a PDF format from our work last week at the PLC Summit, for those that attended. Great energy and interest from all of you, thanks!

For those of you that attended the Solution Tree Assessment Webinar with Eric Twadell and myself today, the presentation from last week also has additional information for you! Hope these resources are useful. I also included a few ELA resources for your friends and colleagues that are immersed in the Language Arts Issues.

Some Key CCSS Web References and Resources

1. The Center on Education Policy

http://www.cep-dc.org/

2. PARCC Consortium

http://www.parcconline.org/

3. The Common Core State Standards documents in Mathematics and ELA http://www.corestandards.org/

4. The Hunt Institute Mathematics

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHuntInstitute#p/u/14/BNP5MdDDFPY

5. The Hunt Institute ELA

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHuntInstitute#p/u/5/JDzTOyxRGLI

6. PARCC Newsletter at

http://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCC-Place-September2011.pdf

7. Myths and facts about the CCSS

http://www.ped.state.nm.us/CCS/plan/read/CoreFacts.pdf

8. SMARTer Balanced resources and Frameworks

http://www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER/default.aspx

9. Key takeaways on the K-12 CCSS ELA Standards

http://www.ped.state.nm.us/CCS/plan/read/KeyPointsELA.pdf

10. What Every Principal Needs to Know About the Teaching and Learning of mathematics (Kanold, Briars and Fennel, 2012, Solution Tree)

http://www.solution-tree.com/products/books/what-principals-need-to-know-about-teaching-and-learning-mathematics.html

Other Resources for Mathematics as of February 2012

1. For Principals

http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/tools-for-teachers/tools-for-principals-and-administrators

This portion of the Inside Mathematics website is designed to support school based administrators and district mathematics supervisors who have the responsibility for establishing the structure and vision for the work of grade level and cross-grade level learning teams.

2. Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice (Inside Mathematics)

http://insidemathematics.org/index.php/common-core-standards

This site provides classroom videos and lesson samples designed to illustrate the Mathematical Practices in action.

3. Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice (CCSSO & NGA)

http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/mathematics/introduction/standards-for-mathematical-practice

This site links the text of the eight Mathematical Practices and the selection on “Connecting the Standards for Mathematical Practice to the Standards for Mathematical Content.”

4. NCTM Lessons

http://illuminations.nctm.org/

Illuminations provide standard-based resources that improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students. These materials illuminate the vision for school mathematics set forth in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, and Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making.

5. Common Core State Standards blog

http://commoncoretools.wordpress.com/

Follow Bill McCallum’s blog on the development of tools that are being developed to support the implementation of the CCSS.

6. CCSS Mathematics Curriculum Materials Analysis Project (Council of Chief State School Officers, The Brookhill Foundation, and Texas Instruments)

http://www.mathedleadership.org/docs/ccss/CCSSO%20Mathematics%20Curriculum%20Analysis%20Project.Whole%20Document.6.1.11.Final.docx

The CCSS Mathematics Curriculum Analysis Project provides a set of tools to assist K-12 textbook selection committees, school administrators, and teachers in the analysis and selection of curriculum materials that support implementation of the CCSS for mathematics.

7. Illustrative Math Project (Institute for Mathematics and Education)

http://illustrativemathematics.org

The main goal for this project is to provide guidance to states, assessment consortia, testing companies, and curriculum developers by illustrating the range and types of mathematical work that students will experience in implementing the Common Core State Standards for mathematics.

8. Progressions Documents For The Common Core Math Standards (Institute for Mathematics and Education)

http://ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions

The CCSS in mathematics were built on progressions: narrative documents describing the progression of a topic across a number of grade levels, informed both by research on children's cognitive development and by the logical structure of mathematics. The progressions detail why standards are sequenced the way they are, point out cognitive difficulties and provide pedagogical solutions, and provide more detail on particularly difficult areas of mathematics. The progressions documents found here are useful in teacher preparation and professional development, organizing curriculum, and provide a link between mathematics education research and the standards.

Training Vs. Trying to Become a Better Version of You!

2012-02-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

The reality is that on most days your teaching and leading work exhausts you. Whether you are leading students or fellow teachers and leaders, YOU are trying really hard… your true teaching and leading work, then, is to train in the disciplines that will enable you to teach and lead efficiently and well, and that will transform who you are as a teacher and leader.

Today was the opening day of the 2012 PLC Summit in Phoenix Arizona. It is an incredible experience to attend and be part of this summit. Great energy, great sessions by some of the nations' best thought leaders on improving student learning, 1000's of attendees, and such great stories from so many wonderful educators about their personal journey for growth and improvement and for becoming part of a well-discpined professional learning community. The following is an excerpt from one of my two sessions today. For the Powerpoint slides from today's presentations you can click here.

PLC Teacher or Leader Discipline:

An intentional activity that, with continuous training, will make me a better teacher and leader

How do you know if you are a well-disciplined PLC teacher or leader? A well-disciplined leader is someone who can discern when silence, healing words, low tolerance, empathy, grace, humor, gentleness, or tough love is needed. He or she assesses each situation promptly and responds with urgency, positive energy, and grace—day in, day out, month in, month out, year after year. Your actions and responses become what people really remember about you. (In other words, your actions determine what others say about you when you are not in the room or no longer at the school.)

What is disciplined action? As an effective PLC teacher or leader, you not only lead well, but you also reflect long enough to articulate to others, with great clarity, the values and beliefs that cause you to lead well. You know how you think. You can pinpoint the rationale for your actions and decision making with ease. Your reasoning is always connected to the simple and fundamental dual mission for schools: creating success for all students and ensuring individual and collective adult learning and growth. You understand that highly effective teaching and school leadership is necessary to prevent school stagnation and a natural drift toward mediocre performance. Most importantly, you make decisions and act in ways consistent with the vision and values for your area of school leadership and routinely review the practices that you and your colleagues are pursuing to determine if they are still aligned with the vision and values.

Trying hard to make good decisions without the training necessary to identify the values and beliefs behind those decisions or to sustain the energy and engagement you need to be at your personal and professional best every day will eventually render you ineffective and frustrating to those closest to you—your family, your fellow faculty members, your students, your fellow administrators, and your friends. The high-energy demands and expectations of effective PLC teaching and leadership require you to lead a disciplined life. They require the pursuit of a better version of you—each day, each week, each month, each year—a version of you in which your current strengths have all become more highly developed through training around the right set of personal disciplines.

Well, that was the excerpt... stay tuned for more reflections from this conference!

Telling You Where to Go! In Search of a Growth Mindset!

2012-02-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2007), summarizes her decades of research around two distinct mindsets of response to failure. Teachers with a growthmindset believe their “talents, aptitudes, interests, and temperament can change and grow over time” (p. 7). Growth-mindset adults embrace collaborative team challenges and failure as an opportunity to improve. In contrast, adults with a fixed mindset believe the qualities of talent, aptitude, interests, and temperament are “carved in stone” (p. 6). These teachers see every failure as an indictment of their worthiness.

However, if you have “the passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it is not going well, it is a hallmark of the growth mindset” (p. 7).

And that is where you, and I, need to go.

To resources and places that stretch us beyond our current knowledge and understanding.

Only then will you close the gap on the implementation of the content, instruction, assessment, and the intervention that will help every student successfully prepare for his or her college or career future. To help you on your leadership and learning journey toward the Common Core, I enclose in this blog a listing of some highlighted resources from our 5 book Common Core in a PLC at Work Series that will be released in late April. My thanks to co-authors Jon Wray and Mona Toncheff for their work on this resource - a list that can both embrace and serve your growth mindset.

Key CCSS Web Resources

1. The Center on Education Policy (cep-dc.org/)

2. PARCC Consortium (parcconline.org/)

3. The Common Core State Standards documents in Mathematics and ELA (corestandards.org/)

4. The Hunt Institute Mathematics (youtube.com/user/TheHuntInstitute#p/u/14/BNP5MdDDFPY)

5. The Hunt Institute ELA (youtube.com/user/TheHuntInstitute#p/u/5/JDzTOyxRGLI)

6. PARCC Newsletter at (parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCC-Place-September2011.pdf)

7. Myths and facts about the CCSS (ped.state.nm.us/CCS/plan/read/CoreFacts.pdf)

8. SMARTer Balanced resources and Frameworks (www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER/default.aspx)

9. Key takeaways on the K-12 CCSS ELA Standards (ped.state.nm.us/CCS/plan/read/KeyPointsELA.pdf)

10. What Every Principal Needs to Know About the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics (Kanold, Briars, & Fennel, 2012, Solution Tree, a K-8 resource)

Other Resources for Mathematics (as of February 2012)

1. For principals

insidemathematics.org/index.php/tools-for-teachers/tools-for-principals-and-administrators

This portion of the Inside Mathematics website is designed to support school-based administrators and district mathematics supervisors who have the responsibility for establishing the structure and vision for the work of grade-level and cross-grade-level learning teams.

2. Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice (Inside Mathematics)

insidemathematics.org/index.php/common-core-standards

This site provides classroom videos and lesson samples designed to illustrate the Mathematical Practices in action.

3. Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice (CCSSO & NGA)

corestandards.org/the-standards/mathematics/introduction/standards-for-mathematical-practice

This site links the text of the eight Mathematical Practices and the selection on “Connecting the Standards for Mathematical Practice to the Standards for Mathematical Content.”

4. NCTM lessons

illuminations.nctm.org/

Illuminations provides standard-based resources that improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students. These materials illuminate the vision for school mathematics set forth in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, and Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making.

5. Common Core State Standards blog

commoncoretools.wordpress.com/

Follow Bill McCallum’s blog on tools that are being developed to support the implementation of the CCSS.

6. CCSS Mathematics Curriculum Materials Analysis Project (Council of Chief State School Officers, The Brookhill Foundation, and Texas Instruments)

mathedleadership.org/docs/ccss/CCSSO%20Mathematics%20Curriculum%20Analysis%20Project.Whole%20Document.6.1.11.Final.docx

The CCSS Mathematics Curriculum Analysis Project provides a set of tools to assist K–12 textbook selection committees, school administrators, and teachers in the analysis and selection of curriculum materials that support implementation of the CCSS for mathematics.

7. Illustrative Math Project (Institute for Mathematics and Education)

illustrativemathematics.org

8. Progressions documents for the Common Core Math Standards (Institute for Mathematics and Education)

ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions

Hope this list helps.

For the AIU Group that attended our seminar today, check out the other blog entries I have written on assessment, and look for a complete electronic file of artifacts given to the AIU Math and Science collaborative.

Minding the Common Core Gap In My Perfectly Skewed World

2012-01-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

January 11th, 2012, the Ed Week headline read: New Details Surface About Common Assessments!

I was ready to read it! Bring it on! In the somewhat skewed world of mathematics education and leadership that I live in, I anxiously await the assessment consortia (PARCC and SMARTER Balanced) frameworks and assessment guidelines. We need them.

I have written previously on this blog about how I believe the CCSS implementation, which demands a much needed less (fewer standards each year) is more (those fewer standards taught for deep demonstrations of student understanding) will fail unless there is a significant paradigm shift in how we approach the day in and day out lesson planning and design for the instruction and assessment of students in our local schools.

The collaborative professional development energy and lesson planning focus of teachers and teacher leaders need the PARCC or SMARTER Balanced guidelines to prepare them for the impending rigor and expectations of the Common Core K-12 mathematics curriculum. Everyone in my field is anxiously awaiting the Common Core Standards implementation and the subsequent 2015 state testing, right?

And then I had an interesting "perspective check" of sorts earlier this week.

Since last April, I have been working with 13 of my colleagues in mathematics education to get our arms around the looming "on the horizon" reality of the Common Core State Standards and the subsequent assessments that will be arriving in the 2014-2015 school year. We have been writing a 5 book professional development series designed to help teachers and teacher leaders close the gap and transition to the expected demands of the CCSS implementation. One could argue that we have had "Common Core on the brain". We are living and breathing the CCSS demands in our work and our writing every day. And with all of it three years away before testing begins - it seems like plenty of time to respond and react, doesn't it?

Maybe not so much.

The gap, between what will be expected for student demonstration of knowledge and the currently reality of what is expected as an assessment of that student knowledge - in the majority of our K-12 schools - is wider than the Grand Canyon. To better understand the gap, first we need to understand exactly how far we need to go. Consider this portion of the aforementioned article from Ed Week, by Catherine Gewertz:

PARRC's math test will include three types of questions: "Innovative, machine-scorable, computer based items; items that call for written arguments or justifications; critiques of mathematical reasoning, or proof that students "attend to precision" in math; and items involving real world scenarios. The performance based assessment in math will count for 40% to 50% of a student's points in that subject, and the end of course exam will yield 50% to 60% of the points.

To better understand where we currently stand, consider this informal poll from my recent speaking experience with about 300 K-12 mathematics educators. This group was already a skewed audience because they were attending the conference, as part of their own interest in all things CCSS. And yet, when I asked this group how many of them have looked at the Common Core States Standards for their grade level or their high school, less than 25% raised their hands. When I asked how many of them were working on current plans to change their instruction to align with the CCSS Mathematical Practices there were no more than 30-35 hands. Scaffolding the question, I asked how many of them at least knew about the CCSS Mathematical Practices aspect of the Common Core Standards (which explains part of the assessment goals of the performance aspects of the PARCC assessments listed above), there were a few more hands and when I asked them to name and describe 2 of those 8 practices, it was difficult.

Here is the point.

We are still in a very very early awareness stage of understanding the expectations of the Common Core Mathematics curriculum and the impending assessments in three years. As reported by the Editorial Project in Education (EPE) research center only 7 out of 47 states at the state department level have fully developed plans for this transition. If this is the level of planning at the state level, no wonder it has not yet bled into an urgency mode at the local school and district level - much less the classroom. As one high school teacher reminded me last week: "I have heard there is such a thing, but they are telling me it is pretty far off, and it probably won't happen anyway". I walked away wondering who "they" was, and if he really understood the benefit to teaching the mathematics curriculum for deeper student understanding.

So, what can you do? Mind the GAP.

Don't wait for your state to tell you what to do. Start your own search of the PARCC and SMARTER Balanced Websites. Don't wait to start the discussions in your elementary school, middle school or high school. Spend intentional time this summer working on collaborative lesson designs that model the Mathematical Practices for mathematics teaching and learning. In a future blog, I will share some potential lesson design templates.

Build your own bridge to close the gap, and make sure you and your students are prepared for what is sure to become a very fast three years from now. Of course I have lots of ideas about how to do this. and I will spend much of 2012 writing about it. I hope you will join me in your own personal journey of leading the way toward the Common Core and its benefits for our students.

People, Places and Family in 2012!

2012-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Like many of the readers of this blog, my family (which at this stage of life has various definitions and extended members) spent parts of this holiday season together. Annual family gatherings are often filled with both joy and sadness, tragedy and triumph, reflection and action, fear and hope as one year ends and another begins.

In some sense, our family gatherings represent the same feelings and emotions that we experience in our professional families as well. If you are a teacher, your students are part of your school "family" and your colleagues are part of that family too. If you are a coach your team is part of your school "family" and your fellow coaches will spend more time with you during the season than your "at home" family. If your are a school administrator or district leader, your "family" widens as you steward the members of the school community as well. It becomes a pretty big family to be part of and to understand.

So, as we were ending our family vacation time on January 1st, we sat around the TV, and began a 45 minute slideshow "walk" through the pictures of our time together, taken by various "keepers" of the camera. As we sat in the living room, and watched the pictures flow by, it was interesting to observe family member reactions. The first 10 minutes of our slideshow was mostly pictures that looked like this:

You know, the very nice scenic views that when you get home you say, "I took 122 pictures of that?" Maybe two would have been sufficient. The reaction around the room was polite, but a bit bored. Then a picture of our two daughters playing xbox 360 skiing (part of a family competition) with legs flailing in the air and arms spread out using imaginary poles, heads knocking together and both of them laughing hysterically - caused a major eruption of laughter, pointing and energy from our gathering. (Note: I cannot supply the picture here as I have yet to secure permission from our two daughters!)

I found myself wondering, what is it about our pictures that as soon as people (especially the members of our extended families) show up in them, a level of new energy and emotion is released? It occurred to me, that our life, our work, our family, is rarely if ever about the place as much as it is about the people - and our experiences with those people, both good and bad. It is the people that make the place have purpose and meaning, passion and emotion, joy and heartache. Without the people - the place becomes empty space.

I first remember experiencing this feeling during my early days as a high school basketball coach at West Chicago Community High School. We had just lost a close home game with a conference rival, and I was a bit distraught over the loss. Once the team members (one of my many families) had gone home, and the coaches too, I decided to walk back into the gym, and just stand in the middle of the gym floor. I wasn't sure it would make me feel any better, but I wanted to capture a picture in my mind of the emotion displayed by 1000+ people just an hour ago: The heartache and the joy of participating in something.

I was struck by the emptiness of the space. The building in the dark, was just that - a nice facility, a nice place - but no emotion no energy. The building, that gym, needed people for it to matter. It needed people that cared about their team, that cared about risk and success. That understood how wins and losses matter only briefly as a measure of success, but real success would reveal itself in whom all of those young men and women would become.

In 12 years of coaching I had taken a picture of every team that was part of my school family. In every case, the years and the records (even the good years) just sort of blend together. But I can always tell you about the year my players asked me to design a "Fibonacci" defense for them (I was a math teacher and we also had the Euclid zone press). Or the year that I dubbed one of our players the X-factor. Or the year that several of my players had significant tragedy in their lives - including the house burning to the ground for one player during the season. And it was our family reaction and response to these events that made the season a success. It is and will always be about the people in our "families" and the relationships built around them.

When I became director of mathematics and science at Stevenson, every fall (at open house) I would insist that we all "dress up" and get together in the commons area for a "team picture". As we grew the picture had quite a few teachers in it (up to 85 at one point) but I loved placing the team picture on my office door every year. As the years unfolded, of course our "family" members changed in the picture. New additions and departures for many different reasons, would impact the picture. No matter, the "Commons" isn't what made the picture work for me, it was the energy of the great people in the picture that mattered. People that just like me, were trying very hard every day to help their student family - to become positive community members.

So, as we enter in 2012, as you celebrate the ending of one semester, and the beginning of another, please keep in mind it is the community members that matter. Celebrate their triumphs, embrace their tragedies, help them grow. Take pictures of them, post those pictures everywhere you can. And then watch the years flow by. Because in a blink, it will be 2013, and you will have to ask, "How did I do in 2012? How did I serve and lead the members of my home and professional families?"

And only you can measure your success as a family member in 2012.

Finding Your Perspective This Holiday!

2011-12-19T06:48:00.000-08:00

Winter Break! Just in time! Whether it started for you this past Friday, or sometime this week, you have got to love winter break! The Holidays, the New Year, a well deserved break from the pace of your work, and an opportunity to relocate your perspective – just in case it has gone out of whack over the past four months and this first semester of the 2011-2012 school year.

After all, the pace of the school teacher and leader’s life is relentless and our perspective can drift from one of hope to one of complaint.

Ask most seasoned teachers and school leaders - their greatest fear - and the most frequently given response will perhaps surprise you. Their biggest fear is endurance. How do you endure and sustain a high level of energy, hope and positive inspiration for students and others year in and year out? Being part of an inspiring work life requires a well-balanced perspective on life… and every year, the winter break offers an opportunity to do a personal perspective inspection.

What is perspective? To a great extent it is how we view something. The term literally means “ Looking through… or seeing clearly”. And this is very hard to do, when immersed in the smothering details of your professional and personal life. Your holiday break - the New Year “break” from 2011 to 2012 offers the opportunity to look in two directions – back on 2011, and then ahead on 2012. To slow down just long enough to examine progress on those vision aspirations.

As you look back on 2011, one overriding thought is that life is short. Where did 2011 go? Where did the time and energy and effort of ending one school year in June and starting another one in August go? Pretty soon all of those school years become a blur of sorts. Your career becomes this connected series of school year segments as thousands of students roll through the kaleidoscope of your work.

Although each year is unique – 2011 had its unique moments for you, each New Year is also a renewed opportunity to do better in the next cycle of your work experience. And so, you look ahead. And one thing you know for sure about 2012 – and you know this from experience, life is uncertain. The singe adjective that best describes the future events of 2012 is unexpected. There will be unexpected… sickness, accomplishments, transfers, benefits, promotions, surgeries, triumphs and tragedies. The events of 2012 are indeed, uncertain.

Because of this, your professional life is filled with the need to prepare for and embrace challenging adjustments as each New Year brings a series of challenging opportunities disguised sometimes as unsolvable problems. And here is the reason for you and me to take the time to know our response and our perspective. Our response can either lead to the complaint of disappointment and failed expectations or to optimism and positive motivation in 2012, which will it be for you, or for me?

In the “The Secret Ailment,” presidential advisor and educational author John Gardner summed up the goal of our journey as teachers and school leaders:

We cannot dream of a utopia in which all arrangements are ideal and everyone is flawless. Life is tumultuous—an endless losing and regaining of balance, a continuous struggle, never an assured victory. Nothing is ever finally safe. Every important battle is fought and re-fought. We need to develop a resilient, indomitable morale that enables us to face those realities and will strive for every ounce of energy to prevail. . . . We have to believe in ourselves, but we mustn’t suppose the path will be easy. It’s tough.

Every important battle in your professional life during 2012 will need to be fought and re-fought. What a great statement about the perseverance perspective needed to meet and embrace adversity with hope. And know that although everyone will not be flawless and there will be no assured victories in 2012, you will build the story of how you will be remembered this coming year, every day, one brick at a time - by the way you choose to respond. May your perspective on life help you to build and choose wisely.

Finding the middle ground between Barney the Dinosaur and Attila the Hun!

2011-12-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Doug Reeves makes me think, learn and laugh. He is one of the best thought leaders in education, and we are all better for it. The title of this blog entry is an actual line in his 2006 book, The learning Leader and Doug has most certainly taught all of us how to become better learners as we try to become more relationally intelligent in how we influence and connect to others.

According to Daniel Goleman and his colleagues (2002), emotionally intelligent leaders give praise, create a positive climate, criticize constructively, provide direction, support people’s needs, and “frame the group’s mission in ways that give more meaning to each person’s contribution—or not. All these acts help determine a leader’s primal emotional impact”. Furthermore, “How well leaders manage their moods and effect everyone else’s moods, then, becomes not just a private matter but a factor in how well a business will do”.

The more demanding and stressful the situation—such as working in chronically low-performing schools, working in a district with severe budget cutbacks, dealing with the elimination of viable and necessary support programs, and coping with public scrutiny—the more essential it is for the school leaders to have a well-developed emotional intelligence.

These comments beg the question of course, as we approach the holidays, how well are you (or I) doing in the relational EQ (Emotional Intelligence) arena? And as our sophomore daughter reminded me last night, "Dad, you interrupted me" - which is a low mark on the relational intelligence scale.

To some extent the future engagement of your colleagues in their work is predicated on the quality of their relationship with you and the emotional climate you create for those around you. According to Goleman, here are four behaviors you can use to rank yourself on the emotional intelligence scale. As you can see I ranked pretty low on behavior # 1 last night.

1. “Listen without interrupting.” Record your next leadership team or teacher team meeting. How often do your team members interrupt one another? How could your team members better listen to one another?

2. “Practice empathy through deliberate inquiry.” How often do your leadership team or teacher team members seek first to understand the meaning and intent of the words of others? How often do you hear, “Tell me more” or “How could I support you in this work?” in your daily conversations?

3. “Never betray a private conversation.” Is the fine line between what is for public knowledge and what is for private knowledge crystal clear for your leadership or teacher team? As collaborative teams pursue greater transparency, how well does everyone respect the confidences of private conversations—including those conversations of the team?

4. “Exhibit genuine passion for the people you serve.” How well do members of your leadership team exhibit genuine interest and pay private and personal attention to the individuals in their sphere of influence?

As you build the relational capacity of your team, help all team members to realize they are hard wired to connect with others. No one benefits from the stress and inequity caused by isolated learning and decision-making. And yet many in our profession would prefer to just be left alone. Why?

Social Intelligence

Daniel Goleman (2007) points out in Social Intelligence that “nourishing relationships have a beneficial impact on our health, while toxic ones can act like slow poison to our bodies” (p. 5). Goleman further notes that “how we connect with others has unimagined significance . . . In effect, being chronically hurt and angered, or being emotionally nourished by someone we spend time with daily over the course of years can refashion our brain” (2007, p. 11)

As your leadership teams respond to the new and required form of professional development in a PLC—learning with colleagues—working to ensure the meetings have meaning and are positive experiences will improve your ability to serve one another during times of great progress as well as times of conflict and stress – which is when we find out what you really believe about communication and teamwork!

Your role is to foster a relational capacity among the various teams in your school, recognizing when it is low, and if so, providing immediate feedback for improvement and growth. No Atila the Huns and no Barney the Dinosaurs allowed as you end first Semester.

Becoming a “Teaching” Institution!

2011-11-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

This week I had the pleasure of working with more than a hundred teacher leaders and administrators from Santa Barbara County in California. All of them are extremely dedicated to their work - especially their leadership of the PLC collaborative team effort toward improving student achievement. We spent time in deep inspection regarding the relational and social intelligence necessary to do PLC work.

At one point we were discussing the process of collaboration that capitalizes on the fact that teachers and administrators come together, using diverse experiences and knowledge, to create a whole that is larger than the sum of the parts. Although teacher collaboration as the solution to sustained professional learning and teaching of one another is the pursuit, there are often few structures in place that allow for that pursuit.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (2010) states it like this:

Seeing themselves as partners with other teachers, they are dedicated to improving the profession. They care about the quality of teaching in their schools, and, to this end, their collaboration with colleagues is continuous and explicit. They recognize that collaborating in a professional learning community contributes to their own professional growth, as well as to the growth of their peers, for the benefit of student learning. Teachers promote the ideal that working collaboratively increases knowledge, reflection, and quality of practice and benefits the instructional program (p. 75).

This led to a reflection on my Northwestern Memorial hospital experience a few years ago during a 5 hour heart ablation procedure. A variety of medical personnel were in attendance in the operating room, as observers. In my follow up visit to the cardiologist, I asked him why there so many observers that day during my procedure – and, didn’t it make him nervous?

His response was simply, “We are a teaching hospital”. He went on to describe the intentional and formative feedback he and his team receive on such procedures – with all level of detail – in order to both teach others and to learn from those “others” in the room that day. They do their great work (I am evidence of that work) in the context of understanding their deep responsibility to teach one another as they grow in their craft and their understanding of what works and what could still be better.

It begs the question, are you part of a teaching school? Do the adults daily observe the work of other adults in order to routinely seek and give formative feedback to one another? Is your school structured in such a way as to support this type of culture?

The professional development and learning of teachers and teacher leaders is not solely a prerequisite for improved student achievement. It is a commitment to the investment in professionals who have the largest impact on students in schools – the administration, faculty and staff. There is an understanding that the knowledge capacity of every faculty member matters. More importantly, however, is that there is also an expectation that every teacher and leader acts on that knowledge and transfers the professional development they receive into their daily classroom practice.

I’d like to think that my doctor is better at his work today than he was almost two years ago, in part, because of that transparency and inspection of his practice. As his patient, I was the beneficiary of his being part of a “Teaching” hospital. Can your students say the same for your school?

Finding Grace in the Workplace and at Home!

2011-11-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

What if all leaders started each day asking themselves, “In every interaction today, considering all the people I interact with, what one thing can I do to make them better?” (K&P, 2006)

One of my favorite leadership books is James Kouzes’ and Barry Posners’ 2006 book A Leader’s Legacy. Although not an educational leadership book, these gifted authors present a powerful and motivational message about your leadership life – its significance, its impact, its aspiration and its courage. You can click on the icon to find out more about the book.

It is their quote listed at the start of this blog, that inspired me to write about Leadership Discipline number Three in my Five Disciplines leadership book: The leadership discipline of getting better at service and sharing. You know, becoming more relationally intelligent in your work and home life. Recently I referred to this as “Plusing” as you can see from the powerpoint graphic below. What are you doing to make the people around you (colleagues, students, parents, and community members) better? And who is in your life that is spending time making you better? Does he or she know that it is part of their job to do so?

As we approach Thanksgiving, I keep thinking we could all use more grace in the workplace and absolutely more grace at home. The job is just too hard without it. And our families are too important to ignore it. Have you ever had someone in your work or personal life that just did not exhibit much grace? You know, a perfectionist that had almost no tolerance for human error or mistakes or perhaps exhibited tolerance but not much compassion for how to deliver the message of accountability?

Your relationships with all that are in your North –South - East and West spheres (and PLC’s are filled with a lot of E-W impact) are very personal in that your words, actions, and inactions impact them – one way or the other. Are your words, actions and inactions adding to my value as a human being – are you “plusing” my world and making me better at what I do and whom I am?

Your journey for development in the leadership discipline of service and sharing or “plusing", begins by knowing extremely well what you need to be firm and fair about, but more importantly, how to do so every day with grace and understanding.

The people we work with and count on are also human, and despite their best intentions, they don’t always do what they say they will do. We need to give them the same opportunities we afford ourselves to try and fail and try again. We need to give them the chance to be the best they can be, even to be better than they thought they could be. We need to support them in their growth and help them to recognize that the journey is not about perfection but about becoming fully human. (K&P, 2006).

We could all use a bit more grace these days. We could all use more thanks giving. So, as you approach Thanksgiving this week, and you take some well-deserved time away from the stress of your work and your commitments, I hope you will take a moment to reflect: Who do I need to “plus” at work or at home next week? Who do I need to thank for their time and effort in “plusing” me or in “plusing” so many of our students and colleagues?

Isn’t that what the truly great leaders do? Don’t they touch us this way, making us say to ourselves: “I want to be in this relationship with you because being in this relationship brings out the best in me and makes me want to be and do all that I am capable of. You see greatness in me that I don’t even realize. And you care for me even when I am not at my best.” (K&P, 2006).

How can I exhibit more grace in the workplace for the remainder of the 2011-2012 school year? This is a great question. And your response begins by recognizing the need for more grace from everyone in the workplace – and helping him or her move toward it. Ask those that are closest to you. They will let you know about your relational intelligence, as you open your leadership mind and heart to the Thanks Giving season.

Paradigm Shifting Teachers!

2011-11-11T07:21:00.000-08:00

Back in September I wrote a blog entry titled “Ready-Set-Action” about the formative assessment efforts of many of the mathematics teachers and teacher leaders in Phoenix Union High School District. Well, their moment of accountability (and celebration) occurred last Wednesday as they gathered together to share their formative assessment stories, highlight samples of student reflection and action, and begin to re-shape the district assessment paradigm for quizzes and tests.

Why do tens of thousands of grades 6-12 mathematics teachers give tests and quizzes (assessment instruments) every week? Surprise - Not to assign grades - although that might be a secondary reason. The paradigm shift that is and needs to occur across the country is that the primary reason you or I prepare and assign our students an in-class assessment (and in a PLC, a common assessment at that) is for the formative purpose of students embracing their errors, identifying their strengths and weaknesses on various learning targets and then taking action (often action required by the teacher or teacher team) to act on that evidence in the pursuit of proficiency on the learning targets. Got all that?

In short, the Phoenix Union mathematics team leaders were given this task:

Every high school’s mathematics PLC collaborative team in the district would commit to using the following assessment process:

1) Write and design Unit (or Chapter) quiz and test instruments together.

2) Agree upon the scoring rubrics to be used to grade the exams.

3) Grade a sampling of student papers together to ensure inter-rater reliability and improved accuracy of the feedback and the grades assigned students.

4) Create a student reflective worksheet, and require this worksheet be completed as part of the student self-reflection and goal setting process when a quiz or testis handed back to the student.

5) Provide specific student practice action materials (worksheets), for the learning targets self-identified as in need of continuous student focus. That is, provide a venue for the student to do more than just make a decision about what they do or don't know, but to take some type of action to get better.

Thus, their assessment instruments would no longer be the "End" but would become the middle of a Teaching - Assessing- Learning never ending cycle for students and for teachers.

And the PUHSD teacher leaders response to this challenge was awesome. They will all readily admit that it is not easy. That it is hard work to create the exams, ensure fidelity to the grading process and to create opportunities to for students to perform meaningful reflection and action on results. It is messy and they are all learning how to improve the process so that it works well for the teacher team as well as the students. For more examples of their assessment work, you can visit the PUHSD Mathematics blog at http://puhsdmath.blogspot.com/ where samples will be posted in the next week or so.

And the beneficiaries are of course the students. As first Semester final exams are about 5 weeks around the corner, it will be interesting to find out the impact this effort will have on student performance overall. Pretty exciting isn’t it?

In the meantime three cheers again for the PLC collaborative mathematics teams in Phoenix Union. It is courageous to step out of their comfort zone and commit holistically to the new mindset about the primary reason why they give quizzes and tests to their students. And to stay strong in that commitment – when some of their colleagues might want to do so.

When we met this past week, for continued professional development together, they took on another major common collaborative team task – that if not addressed leaves these huge inequity gaps in what students learn in mathematics. And if not addressed will leave students far behind in preparation for the CCSS mathematics rigor coming right around the proverbial corner.

But they are a courageous bunch and they dug in willingly. The pictures you see in this blog is the team sharing that took place as they worked together to create high cognitive demand rich mathematical tasks for their next unit of study. Detail on how to do that really well within your collaborative team is for another blog…

These teacher leaders are learning to share their stories and their artifacts – their successes and their failures – as they risk and learn from the reality of paradigm shifting implementation. Will you join them?

Great Experiences at Authorspeak!

2011-11-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

This week I am attending Authorspeak, a new event for Solution Tree that presents the voices of their authors (of recent books) and provides an opportunity for more than one thousand school leaders to learn, plan and interact together.

In the past two days I have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful writers, educators, publishing experts, and thought leaders on every topic from School leadership, to 21st Century skills, to RTI, , PLC's at Work, Literacy, Assessment and more...

Today I had the chance to interact and work with many conference attendees during the course of two presentations. My sincere thanks for taking the time to attend both sessions and for you interest not only in the Five Disciplines book, but the Principal's mathematics book as well!

At the Five Disciplines of PLC Leaders session we defined a PLC Leadership Discipline as a Set of actions you intentionally practice, through continuous training, to improve your ability to lead in your N-S-E-W sphere of Influence. For a PDF of the Powerpoint presentation, and for information on the book, and its resources for your own professional development, you can click on the picture.

For those of you in a attendance, I hope you find some Quadrant II time this weekend, and remember, watch out for the Quadrant III drift!

For those that attended our Principal's Mathematics Session (with Diane Briars and Skip Fennell), I will add those links to this site tomorrow!

In the meantime, remember, Your first responsibility as a leader is to define reality, your last is to say thank you, and in between the two, you must become a servant of others - understanding that PLC's are a really great thing, but they are not soft. In the end it is your leadership of others that will close the performance gap on that defined reality!

Walking Down Collaboration Road...

2011-10-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

... While Deciding What Principal’s Need to Know!

This week, Solution Tree Press and the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) released a collaborative book project: What Every Principal Needs to Know About the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics. For more information on the book, you can click on the picture of the cover and in another blog entry I will detail the purpose and intent of the book itself, and how it might serve school leaders in the future.

I was first approached by Solution Tree Press to work on the book - part of a series of elementary school principal books with various curricular themes - about 16 months ago. Considering my content knowledge strengths are primarily in the 6-12 mathematics arena, I knew I needed to be part of a team of writers with various expertise and research affirmed knowledge in K-8 mathematics.

And the collaboration began with my two co-authors on this project, Skip Fennell and Diane Briars. Skip is a recent Past President of NCTM from the Baltimore area and Diane is the current Past President of NCSM from the Pittsburgh area. And I am from the Chicago area, now living near San Francisco. As our writing project hit a crescendo and came to a close in early September (after a year of planning and writing) there was a sense of achievement that was more meaningful, because it was something we did together.

Like many new teams that get together, we each brought individual strengths to the project, but we were hoping to use those strengths to create a great collaborative effort that would result in the goal of the book: Mathematics support for K-8 Principals and teachers. Like many teacher teams, this was our first project working together. And as I anticipated, working with Skip and Diane was a tremendous opportunity for us to learn and grow from one another.

The serious writing and pursuit of common agreements took about 10 months. About the same as a school year for a collaborative learning team in a PLC at work school. We also had that dilemma of how to collaborate on a weekly basis even if we could not be together face to face. Phone calls, emails, shared electronic files and folders, and planned meetings in airports became part of our work together.

Now that the book is completed it is a bit easier to look back and not quite feel the urgency of deadlines, and ideas, and changes and edits and agreements on the books’ many major as well as minor themes. When you are in the process of collaborating, it all seems to be a bit stressful at times, right? The constant urgency and the beat of the school year calendar, is stressful for your collaborative team, right? The same was true for us.

And here is the best part. Skip and Diane are colleagues I have known a long time in the profession. I have heard them speak, I have occasionally worked with them on a short term project or two for NCSM or NCTM, but it has always been a bit of a “knowing you professionally from afar” sort of thing. Maybe like your relationship with colleagues in your school or district. You know, the colleague that is teaching or leading in the classroom down the hall, or the school across town; but you don’t really know them. And you certainly don’t depend on them for your success.

And yet, you cannot experience what it means to work in an authentic collaborative team unless you are willing to be interdependent on others. And that is never easy. During the past year, I learned how to become interdependent on these two colleagues I had known from afar. Because of our work together on this book project, I learned their craft knowledge about mathematics teaching and learning. I learned how they view the world, how they understand change, and mindset development and growth and paradigm shifts that will make a difference. And I learned much about the things in life that makes both of them the great educators they have become.

And along the way, I learned several lessons about effective collaboration with these two esteemed colleagues. In this blog, I share two of those lessons. I hope you can apply them in the work of your collaborative teacher or school leadership teams this year.

Leave your egos at the door

Understanding that you don’t fully know all the answers—and never will—is a paradox of team wisdom and an actual strength of PLC school leaders and team members. In Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton (2006) explain that leadership wisdom means

…striking a balance between arrogance (assuming you know more than you do) and insecurity (believing you know too little to act). This attitude enables people to act on their present knowledge while doubting what they know. It means they can do things now, as well as keep learning along the way.

Skip and Diane both possess this important quality for members of successful teams. They fit perfectly Carol Dweck’s description of individuals that see themselves growing and learning as a life long endeavor. And they know just enough, to know they can always improve upon “The work”. When you decide to write a book, or be part of a team, this is a very important quality. Not only did our writing receive fair and sometimes severe critical analysis from one another, it went out for review twice, was shaped by editors, and even down to the wire, went through a few hundred minor edits, all designed to produce a great collaborative project. I have 43 drafts that led to the final document. No egos allowed when collaborating with others. Hint: Be critical with grace, and tie every decision to the vision of the project.

Be intimate with your work

Colleagues who have the most influence on you are those closest to you. To really serve and influence others on your team requires authentic closeness, and closeness requires making an enemy of superficiality—and the enemy of superficiality is intimacy. For team members, intimacy is measured by the closeness of your relationships with those on your team, as well as your closeness to the quality of work or competence you and your peers provide.

Are you intimate with your work? Skip, Diane and I wanted to be intimate with this book project. We were willing to commit to it. Make the sacrifice to it. Persevere through it. We wanted it to really matter. How about you? Are you starting to rethink what it means to be intimate with your work? Ultimately, you decide how real intimacy will develop through the “quality of service” value created by your work together. In successful collaborative teams all adults come to work in order to serve the growth and improvement of others.

Your commitment will lead to a better understanding of the work and the lives of those you serve with on your team. For example, I learned that Diane was a die-hard Steelers fan and Skip was a die-hard Ravens fan. When they met in the football playoffs last January we were right in the middle of writing this book, and the emails were flying around, about who was going to win that game! We learned more about each other. We learned that Skip knows a place in Baltimore with the best clam chowder of all time, that I like Harry Carrey’s on the lake in Chicago, and that Diane has these cats.

And mostly we learned how to bring our strengths to the team, in order to enjoy the journey of writing together. We had fun, we worked hard, and we did not take ourselves too seriously. The end result, different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, with an intimacy, and a commitment to one shared goal. Sound like any of the teams you currently serve on?

In the best teams, during and at the end of the year, the outcome of your work becomes a more deep and lasting friendship with your colleagues, and the development of a course content, assessment and instruction that reflects the high quality of your work together. I hope that will become the legacy of your team, as you walk that collaborative road every day. I know it did for us.

Ending the Era of Invitation!

2011-10-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

With the CCSS for mathematics, the era of invitation to change the practice of teaching and learning mathematics ends. The CCSS expectations for teaching, learning and the new state assessments of that learning, usher in an opportunity for unprecedented change of the second order variety. Since 1991, the lack of coherent and sustained change toward effective practice has been partially caused by a general attempt to work within first order change parameters. First order change is characterized as working within existing paradigms with marginal disturbance to the system, and implemented within the existing knowledge and skills of those closest to the action – the faculty, staff and administration of a school.

Thus, although vision documents such as PSSM, Reasoning and Sense Making and Adding It Up clearly defined teaching, learning and assessment expectations for mathematics, first order change rules allowed for little coherent shifting into the most essential paradigms needed to deliver on the promise of successful mathematics learning for every child. In many cases the very system of previous states’ standards in mathematics assessment caused local district resistance to embracing the promise of the effective teaching and learning of mathematics. The CCSS will be the catalyst for breaking down that resistance, and providing the support you need, as teachers and leaders in your school.

It is time to disturb the system.

The CCSS will bring into focus five fundamental 2^nd order paradigm shifts required to prepare every student and teacher for the successful implementation of the CCSS in mathematics. They are:

1. Professional development – the CCSS require a shift in the grain size of change beyond the individual isolated teacher or leader. It is the grade level or course based collaborative learning team (collaborative team), within a professional learning community (PLC) at work culture that will develop the expanded teacher knowledge capacity necessary to bring coherence to the implementation of the CCSS. The grain size of change now lies within the power and the voice of the collaborative team in a PLC.

2. Mathematics Teaching and learning – the CCSS require a shift to daily lesson designs that include plans for the CCSS student mathematical practices that focus on the process of learning that develop deep student understanding of the standards. This paradigm shift requires teaching for procedural fluency and student understanding. One can and should not exist without the other. This will require a collaborative team commitment for the use of student engaged learning opportunities around high cognitive demand mathematical tasks in every classroom.

3. Mathematics Content – the CCSS require a shift to a “less (fewer standards) is more (deeper rigor with understanding)” standard. This will require new levels of knowledge and skill development for every teacher of mathematics to understand what the CCSS expects students to learn at each grade level or in each course blended with how they expect students to learn it. What are the mathematical knowledge, skills, understandings and dispositions that should be the result of each unit of mathematics instruction? A school and mathematics program committed to helping all students learn ensures great clarity and low teacher-to-teacher variance to answering the questions, “learn what and learn how?”

4. Mathematics Assessment – the CCSS will require a paradigm shift to assessments that not only reflect the rigor of the standards but also model the expectations for and benefits of formative assessment development around all forms of assessment, including traditional assessment instruments such as quizzes and tests. How will you know if each student is learning the essential mathematics skills, concepts, understandings, and dispositions the CCSS deems most essential in high school?

5. Mathematics Intervention – the CCSS require a paradigm shift in the team and school response to intervention (RTI). Much like the CCSS vision for teaching and learning, RTI can no longer be invitational. That is, the RTI response to intervention becomes R^2TI – a Required Response to Intervention. Stakeholder implementations of RTI programs include a process that requires students to participate and attend. How will you and your collaborative team respond and act on evidence (or lack of evidence) of student learning?

Second order change is never easy. It will require your willingness to break away (or to help a fellow teacher break away) from past practice of teaching low cognitive demand level mathematics lessons at the rate of one standard per day. Breaking away from a past practice that provides few student opportunities for exploration, understanding and active engagement, or that uses assessment instruments that may or may not honor a fidelity to accuracy and timely student feedback followed by student action and correction of errors. These five mindsets (paradigm shifts) will be required by every teacher in order to meet the expectations of the CCSS.

Some advice as the reality of the CCSS mathematics sets in: First do your teacher work together. Pursue the PLC culture. In well-designed grade level or course based collaborative learning team, your teacher knowledge capacity will only grow and flourish. Then as a collaborative learning team, make great decisions about the teaching, learning, assessment and the response to learning that will impact student achievement in mathematics. And make those great and sometimes difficult decisions – every day together. You can start with the CCSS mathematical practices: How will you and your team ensure various aspects of the CCSS practices are part of your unit and daily lesson planning?

The Primary Barrier to CCSS Implementation

2011-09-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the probability there will not be an authentic and successful implementation of the Common Core States Standards (CCSS). It will require much more than a first order of change in our nations’ schools. And I am not sure we are up for it. We have not been for the past twenty years, what will be different now? And where does the hope of implementation lie?

As of late August, 2011, 44 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the voluntary Common Cores States’ Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics. Despite some of the rhetoric and representations regarding the CCSS, these are not national standards developed by the federal government. The CCSS K-12 standards for learning were released by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, in June 2010 with the hopes of creating a consistent set of learning expectations K-12 across the states. You can click here for access to the full set of the Common Core States Standards in ELA and Mathematics and more.

The June 2010 release included a commitment to begin testing in the 2014 -2015 school year, and two assessment consortia emerged – PARCC and SMARTer Balanced. A little more than one year later, these state led consortia are beginning the effort to design curricular frameworks aligned with the CCSS for public review and reaction this fall. You can view and review these frameworks and find out more about which consortia your state is a member of, at the PARCC or SMARTer Balanced websites.

Although there is still a lot of detail to be worked out with both consortia, a recent study from the Center of Educational Policy (CEP), Common Core State Standards: Progress and Challenges in School Districts’ Implementation highlighted several findings including:

1) About two-thirds of the districts in the adopting states cited inadequate or unclear state guidance on the CCSS as a major challenge.

2) Districts appear to face little resistance to implementing the CCSS from parents, community members or educators.

These are interesting findings. And they are not surprising. First, many of the states are still trying to determine how to best address the complexities of change that will come with the realized implementation of these standards. Some states are still deciding whether to fully participate in one consortium over the other. Until those decisions are made it is difficult to provide the type of guidance that will be needed and expected at the district level.

Second, there is little resistance at this point in time from the educators at the classroom level, because as of yet, nothing has changed. The K-12 teaching and learning of ELA and Mathematics is currently still at status quo stage. I have been in several schools and classrooms this year, and many teachers and administrators at the school site level, either know very little detail about the CCSS or they are vaguely aware that someone from their school or department is on the district CCSS Task force or committee. The expectations of change that will be caused by the CCSS has not yet hit the implementation stage at the grass roots level.

You must ask, what will be the primary barrier to the successful implementation of the CCSS and K-12 student readiness by the spring of 2015?

Will it be the states' failure to provide adequate professional development and support?

Will it be a public outcry that these Common Core States Standards are somehow a bad thing for our Nations’ children?

Will it be resistance from the community or parents that we are expecting too much of our children, as we attempt to prepare every child for college and careers beyond high school?

Will it be funding? No money to teach using research affirmed instruction or student engaged learning? No money to create formative cycles of learning with student assessments?

Will it be the technology? It won’t live up to the promise of on-line assessments?

Will it be that the standards of the CCSS are just too rigorous for all children? Our profession of teachers and leaders just cannot deliver on the expectations of the CCSS?

Will it be that we should not expect the same standards of learning in California as we do in Illinois or Pennsylvania or Louisiana?

Ultimately, it will not be any of these factors that will derail the successful implementation of the quality K-12 education described by the CCSS ELA and Mathematics expectations for our nation’s children. It will be our failure to understand that the authentic implementation of the CCSS requires the most essential elements of 2^nd order change.

At least in my field, and in my leadership sphere of mathematics, there is almost nothing in the CCSS that we have not been inviting the educational community to change toward, since 1991. Twenty years! The successful K-12 teaching, assessing and learning of mathematics has just not penetrated into all of our nations' schools at a deep change level.

What possibly makes us think the CCSS will end this era of invitation to change? And if it is to end, what must every educator do in order to help children learn well?

That will be the topic of my next blog!

A Commitment to Care - Forever

2011-09-13T05:19:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot written the past 3 weeks about the 10^th Anniversary of September 11^th, 2001. And it is one reason that my own voice was somewhat silent about it, as I understand that I am not a journalist or a writer. I knew that it would be hard for me to write anything that would add to the conversation.

And yet, on Sunday, I felt this sense of urgency that I must not forget that moment in time – ever. And of all things it was during a Pre-Calculus tutoring session with our 15 year old daughter and her best friend. They were 5 in 2001. And her best friend is the oldest of four girls. The two youngest are 10 and 7. Our daughter spends so much time at their house they refer to her as “Cinco”, as in the 5^th child.

Our daughter’s best friend has a Mom that is incredibly funny, has a great wit, and seems to somehow balance the demands of work and home, and all that comes with the life of four very active children. And she does it with a deeper sense of understanding then many parents I know.

Our daughter’s best friend has an equally hard working Dad, that somehow, manages day in and day out to handle 5 Girls under the age of 15 when Cinco is visiting, his wife and his mother-in-law, who all live under the same roof. He is just a really really good guy. And the 4^th of July is an important holiday.

He is a 9/11/2001 survivor.

His story is riveting. His survival is a miracle. His memories will be forever. His wife and family know both the guilt (why did he survive when so many did not?) and the joy (he survived) of a moment that forever changed their lives. They have a sense of appreciation that allows them to live today, in a way that creates a positive caring for tomorrow - because they came so dangerously close to not having more moments to build that legacy.

On 9/11/2001, I was about 1700 miles away from my daughter’s best friends family. I did not know them yet. I did not know their story. But, for a brief moment, in the aftermath of it all, I experienced an incredible moment in my life as an educator. At the time I was the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction in my suburban high school district – Stevenson HSD 125.

Some may remember that 9/11/2001 was a Tuesday morning. The following Friday there was a request for a national moment of silence at 12:00pm EST. At our high school we used a live feed into our classrooms, set up big screens in our commons and lunch areas, and at 11:AM Central time, our students participated in this national moment; silence, a signing of the national anthem, an opportunity to donate to the recovery and relief effort, and words of comfort and encouragement orchestrated by our Student Council leaders.

I stood in our cafeteria among 100’s of our students during this 20-minute reflection and response on what was a very fresh and open wound. All around me, 15 and 16 year old students - students that for the most part live in that teenager “it’s all about me world”, were in a deep commitment to the moment. There was a spirit of fellowship, of giving, of selflessness, of caring that I have rarely observed in all of my years in education. It was everyone. And it moved me to tears – with students I did not know. With teenagers that in that moment cared deeply and wept for the families, like my daughter’s best friend. There was this triumph of our humanity, amidst the tragedy that is now simply known as nine eleven.

Our current seniors were 7-8 years old, in 2001. Current 2^nd graders (The class of 2022) were not born yet. I hope that whatever we do as adults, responsible for educating the next generation of students, that we will teach the class of 2022, a “commitment to caring” and giving to and for others. This must become one of the sustaining responses to the tragedy of September 11^th, 2001 – as that class recognizes and understands the 20^th anniversary of a moment we must never forget.

Formative Assessment: Ready... Set.. Action!

2011-09-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

Walk into a high school mathematics classroom, a day or two after a major unit or chapter assessment instrument (usually called a test or quiz) and watch what happens as the assessment instrument is passed back to the students. What do you observe?

By now, teachers across the nation have passed back at least one and perhaps two or three such assessment instruments. The summative quiz or test usually has been scored by the teacher, has an assigned grade attached to it with some feedback, students quickly compare with other students to see who passed or failed, "You only got a D? Ha! I got a C+", the students might spend a brief moment listening as the teacher points out certain places on the exam where students should have been better prepared - but were not ready, and then the tests are either collected or put away, as the new material for the next Chapter or Unit begins.

No student reflection, and no student action required.

Dylan Wiliam in his 2011book, Embedded Formative Assessment, indicates that an assessment instrument such as a quiz or a test, functions formatively in the classroom to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have made in absence of that evidence (p.43).

There are two key phrases in William’s definition: evidence about student achievement is elicited and… makes decisions about next steps. That is, teacher and students in conjunction with their peers must act on the evidence. Otherwise the formative process is empty in terms of its magnified impact on student learning.

I taught twelve years, before I finally thought about acting with my peers - creating assessments and lesson designs that would not only help my students get ready for the test (reflective work during the unit), get set (reflective study opportunities in class as they prepare for the exam), and then take action (after the exam). Like the scenario, above, I just passed back the quizzes (students could keep them), passed back the tests (I collected them right back), and moved on to the next Unit. There was no required student action, on the evidence collected from the assessment instruments used in class.

Why did it take me so long to understand the power of the student assessment and learning research revealed in Wiliam's definition?

To some extent I had a limited mindset regarding the purpose of the assessment instruments (quizzes and tests) I was writing and using. My only purpose was to hold students accountable to the learning of the unit, and to assign grades. The idea that an assessment instrument such as a quiz or test could be used primarily as a reflective/goal setting tool to help students self-focus on areas of improvement, just wasn't in my scope of understanding.

But now it is. And I have no excuse not to shift my mindset.
And so it is too, for the teachers and more importantly the PLC teacher teams, in Phoenix Union HSD. In 2011-2012, the PUHSD mathematics PLC teacher teams, are learning from one another across the district. There are several high school programs and PLC teacher teams demonstrating evidence of student achievement blowing past the barriers limiting significant improvement. In every case, the students are provided opportunities to take action on all assessment instruments before and after quizzes or tests are given - both in preparation for major student assessments and after the assessments. Every assessment is viewed as a student opportunity to learn from mistakes and errors - a motivator to keep trying and learning.

The students are learning that they do not primarily take the test to get a grade. At best that is a secondary consideration. They primarily take the quiz or test, in order to self-determine areas of strength and weakness, and to focus the action they will take for future learning. How?

Every high school mathematics PLC teacher team in the district has committed to using the the following assessment process:

1) Write and design Unit (or Chapter) quiz and test instruments together.
2) Agree upon the scoring rubrics to be used to grade the exams.
3) Grade a sampling of student papers together to ensure inter-rater reliability and improved accuracy of the feedback and the grades assigned students.
4) Create a student reflective worksheet, and require this worksheet be completed as part of the student self-reflection and goal setting process when a quiz (click here for a sample) or test (click here for a sample) is handed back to the student.
5) Provide specific student practice action materials (worksheets), for the learning targets self-identified as in need of continuos student focus. That is, provide a venue for the student to do more than just make a decision about what they do or don't know, but to take some type of action to get better. for some great samples, go to the Stevenson HSD Algebra 1 website.

Thus, the Assessment instrument will no longer be the "End" but it will become the middle of a Teaching - Assessing- Learning never ending cycle for students and for teachers. My colleagues and I are working on this idea and I will share it later this year in more detail, further down the road.

In the meantime three cheers for the PLC teacher teams in Phoenix Union. It is courageous to step out of their comfort zone and commit holistically to the new mindset about the primary reason why they give quizzes and tests to their students. In November we all meet together for the professional development of one another. And the teacher teams will share their stories and their artifacts - the success and the failures - the reality of implementation of a new idea is always messy, right?
Let's all cheer them on!

Breaking the Barriers of Poor Performance - While Doing Things Right!

2011-08-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

I Love the Mathematics Teachers of Phoenix Union HSD in Phoenix, AZ. They are a diverse bunch of highly committed and savvy adults - working for a very difficult and challenging educational cause in this very urban district. They are a blend of veterans and new leaders wanting to make a significant difference in their schools. And yet, to a great extent it appears they have reached a student mathematics performance plateau in their district of 12 high Schools.

In all regular level college prep mathematics courses offered, for the past five years, the data story will tell you that every year about 48% percent of the students will receive grades of D or F each Semester and 50% will not be able to pass the District designed and teacher leader developed rigorous Semester Final Exams.

In all honors level mathematics classes, the data for the past five years will reveal about 18% of students with a Semester grade of D or F and a 30% rate of not passing the District Final Exams.

On the surface you could wonder, is that it? Is that the best students in Phoenix Union can possibly ever perform in mathematics?

Are they subject to a glass ceiling barrier of performance they will never be able to break?

That was the fundamental question the 50+ Department Chairs (in PUHSD they are called instructional leaders) and course based team leaders explored last week during PLC professional development time.

And yet, you need to know the context of this data story

They are doing everything the right way...

For the past Five years, the teachers and teacher leaders in PUHSD have done everything the right way.

Here is part of their Story:

1) They have not lowered Standards of rigor just to get better results

They give District wide final exams at the end of each Semester for all students of a given course. These exams have actually increased in rigor over the past 5 years, and are well on the way to preparing students for the CCSS 2014-2015 exams. At each high school, they work collaboratively to design Unit or Chapter exams to match and align with the District final exams.

2) They have opened unprecedented access to the college prep and honors curriculum

Greater numbers of students than ever before are receiving increased opportunity and access to college prep and honors curriculum at each school. Compared to just five years ago in the college prep curriculum:

From 4100 Algebra 1 students to 5200

From 2900 Geometry students to 4600

From 1200 Advanced Algebra Students to 2800

These same type of percent increases in student access and participation exist in the honors curriculum as well. It is interesting that despite these increased numbers of students in all mathematics courses, the data story has stayed the same. Grade distributions are about the same. Semester exam performance (A fixed standard for rigor and excellence) is about the same. This is a paradox, right?

On one hand, all classes have expanded the number of students enrolled from five years ago, and held the performance levels the same. You could argue this is a victory for the faculty, staff and students, as greater numbers have access, yet performance has not decreased (it has stayed roughly the same).

On the other hand, the percent of students getting D's and F's doesn't seem to change - no matter how many students are in the course. In other words, there is this artificial ceiling on student performance. Almost a self-fulfilling prophecy invisible trap.

Check it out at your school. No matter how many students you have enrolled in each mathematics class, year in year out, do you have about the same number of students getting D's and F's? Maybe for your school it is 28% or 22% or 35%. What type of numbers would it take before it bothers you enough to notice the steady pattern of invisible "Acceptable" performance?

3) They have evidence in their PLC's of incredible pockets of Excellence

With permission, these two pictures shows some of the teacher leaders, talking about the way their mathematics learning Teams in their PLC's have taken off and broken through the barriers that seem to hold down PUHSD Students. They defy conventional wisdom as they have increased student access to the college prep curriculum and significantly lowered the Semester D and F rate (Recall the Tyranny of OR from an earlier blog entry).

For more details about these barrier breakers, you can contact the district leader for Mathematics in Phoenix Union, Mona Toncheff, at toncheff@phxhs.k12.az.us and visit the PUHSD mathematics blog at http://puhsdmath.blogspot.com/

Many of the PUHSD PLC teacher learning teams have been able to break that glass ceiling through a variety of student support programs, teaching and instructional design changes and of course creating an arena for increased student responsibility and preparation for assessment.

In my next blog entry I will focus on the two very specific formative assessment issues they are working on in 2011-2012 in PUHSD to break through the barriers to improved student performance so that the pockets of excellence become the norm for every team at every school!

Homework as a motivational Tool! (Homework Rules Part II)

2011-08-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

There is another way to think about [student] motivation - not as a cause, but as a consequence of achievement... Dylan Wiliam (2011)

In my previous blog, I suggested that as the school year begins, and the homework begins, make sure you collaboratively develop homework assignments with other teacher colleagues and peers from the same grade level or course. The lack of coherent team driven homework assignments is a great inequity creator in your school on a weekly basis, if you do not do so.

I also promised that in Homework Part II, I would review the Five Hallmarks of Good Mathematics Homework Assignments and provide a few (high school) samples for your review and use. The source for these Five Hallmarks comes from an Educational Leadership article on the Five Hallmarks of Good Homework by Cathy Vatterott, in September of 2010.

Question: Can daily mathematics homework assignments motivate student learning?

She provides sound advice for the mathematics community, as homework is such a vibrant aspect of the lifeblood of the daily work and expectations with students. From my perspective, daily homework is an essential aspect of the formative assessment and learning process with students. Yet homework in mathematics is generally so discouraging and so de-motivating for students, they fail to often complete the assignments or complete the assignments with much success.

Thus, assigned daily homework needs the same consideration as any assessment instrument or tool used during a unit or chapter of instructional learning targets. Can Homework, be a motivating teacher tool?

Hallmark 1: Purpose
Does each homework problem assigned connect to a specific purpose and learning target? Why is each problem in the assigned homework set for that evening? Let the students know! When students receive all assignments in advance of the Chapter, it shows planning for student practice that has a purpose. In mathematics, homework practice should be tiered for repeated practice during a Unit. 10 problems for the same learning target in one night, is not as effective as 3 problems on that learning target assigned over a period of 4-5 days.

You can click here for a scanned example of the Geometry Chapter 4 homework assignment sheet given to students by the teacher team in advance of the chapter. Notice how all problems assigned have answers provided as well. This team understands that the purpose of homework practice is to formatively learn from mistakes ( I did not get the right answer) while practicing. Keep trying the problem solution path until it matches with the correct response. Students cannot do this if they have to wait until the next day for answers to the "Even" problems assigned.

In fact, the practice of failing to provide answers to homework practice contributes to students waiting to actually do the work, until the teacher shows them the next day. It is a de-motivating factor.

Hallmark 2: Efficiency
Ask yourself, is this homework assignment filled with busy work, or is it really essential to student demonstrations of understanding the learning target? Mathematics homework cannot wear the student down and reflect an inordinate amount of time that fails to deliver a meaningful return for a reasonable amount of student effort. Consider a 3:1 ratio of time. As a teacher, if you actually did the homework - showing all of the work required and completing all problems and tasks assigned - how long would the assignment take you? Consider a 3:1 ratio - if it takes you 20 minutes it will take the students at least an hour or more. My experience has been that mathematics homework that takes most students more than 35- 40 minutes, will have diminishing returns.

Think less is more. Assign fewer problems, but expect more in terms of cognitive demand and demonstration of understanding on those practice problems. You can click here for a scanned example of the Algebra Chapter 9 homework assignments given to students by the teacher team in advance of the unit or chapter. Notice the careful selection of problems as well as directions for computations issues. This team has thought out their expectations for homework, quite carefully

Hallmark 3: Ownership
When possible give students some ownership in the homework assignment tasks. This can happen by giving them choice in selecting problems form different sets available or by allowing them choice about the best way to master a learning target - which problems do the students think they need to do for additional practice before the quiz or test? Students could make this choice based on the results of self-reflection regarding current learning target strengths and weaknesses identified in class. This allows for some actual differentiation in the assignment - especially when the assignment is review in nature.

Note too that assignments cannot be vague such as "Study for the Test". In Mathematics, this has too broad of a meaning for students and leaves them guessing. Effective teacher teams, will agree on the exact process students should follow when studying for a test, and work with students to develop effective preparations plans that they own.

Hallmark 4: Competence
Everyone reading this blog has an area of no talent or incompetence. You may not be able to sing, or play tennis, play the piano, or cook, etc. And it is rare that you actually practice (much less practice every day) in that area of 'no talent'. The same is true for students in mathematics. If they think of math as an area of no talent they rarely will be motivated to complete a math assignment. They do not feel competent in doing so.

If the assignment is not doable for them, they will get discouraged and shut down. And no system of grading will overcome this frustration and fear for the student. They just won't run to practice an area of 'no talent'. Thus, creating learning conditions in class for successful formative and guided practice, and checking student readiness for successful independent practice (homework) on the complex tasks within the assignment is crucial.

Hint: Do not assign homework that the students are not prepared to do successfully. Or, significantly cut back on the assigned problems. There is no law that requires mathematics homework be assigned every night.

Hallmark 5: Aesthetic Appeal
Students need mathematics homework assignments that are motivational, meaningful and visually appealing. This means assignments given out of the textbook supplemental worksheets, etc. should not be used. Many of you know that I am a writer of mathematics textbooks grades 6-12. And I would never use the lesson practice sheets for homework assignments as they violate most of the Hallmarks discussed here. There is no room for students to show their work, there is often a lot of busywork. The problem (or math task) set often does not align with what I exactly taught that day, and there is rarely a sufficient set of high cognitive demand task. This is not the fault of the publishing company per se. The practice worksheets were not meant to be used for student independent practice on their own. Or to be appealing, because to save space, problems are jammed to close together to show meaningful student work.

You can click here for a scanned example of the Geometry Chapter 7 homework assignments given to students by the teacher team in advance of the unit or chapter. Notice the esthetic appeal of the assignment sheet itself as well as the nature of most assignments being created by the team.

As your teacher team creates students homework assignments for each Unit in the 2011-2012 school year, think of ways that you can be creative with the daily work that students must do. Remember that the purpose of homework, is student formative practice toward the expected learning targets.

And as Dylan Wiliam said at the top, does the homework you assign actually result in student motivation - not as a cause (I need to be motivated to do my homework) but as a consequence (The homework is assigned in such a way that it results in my being motivated to keep trying).

Ask your teacher team - Does the way we assign homework, and the tasks that we assign to be done - motivate students to want to learn mathematics - even if they think it is an area in which they have 'no talent"?

Let the Homework Rules Begin! (Part I)

2011-08-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I ran across two seemingly unrelated articles recently (Assessing Vertical Alignment and Five Hallmarks of Good Homework) that made think about the inequity created in general by the daily homework practices of teachers - especially mathematics teachers. As we enter the 2011-2012 school year, what are guidelines you should seriously consider regarding the rigor and quality of the daily homework assigned to students in a grade level or course?

In a professional learning community culture, homework - which should really just be part of the formative assessment process for the teacher and student - should not be at the discretion of the individual teacher. Homework is the critical first place where inequities in student mathematical experiences are manufactured. If the grade level or course based learning team cannot agree on the daily mathematical tasks and the rigor of those tasks on daily homework assignments then formative learning experiences and the preparation for student learning outcomes will vary to the point of harm to students.

This point cannot be understated.

In a professional learning community, all students in the course or grade level should receive the same formative assessment task expectations (homework) on a daily basis. As the PLC teacher team members work together to determine the homework assignments for students, the potential for inequity in task selection and rigor is minimized.

Thus, teacher team developed Homework Assignments in mathematics should be designed and developed for the unit or chapter of study in advance of the start of the unit lessons. The following list provides an equity basis for your teacher team developed homework assignments - every unit of learning throughout the year.

1. Student Opportunity to Learn: Do all teachers of the course assign the same content for formative Homework practice? (Is some content skipped by some teachers). By the end of the Unit will every teacher have covered the same student practice with the same level of rigor?

2. Depth of Knowledge: Are cognitive requirements between the formative assessment tasks (Homework) and the learning targets in the unit consistent for each teacher of the course? Is the same complexity of knowledge (and skill) sought/required by all teachers for the homework assignments?

3. Range of Knowledge: Do all teachers of the course include daily homework tasks that prepare students for procedural fluency as well as conceptual understanding tasks that will be part of the common assessment instruments used by all teachers and all students in the course? (This is a goal of the CCSS expectations)

4. Balance of Representation: Are homework learning targets for a particular cluster of standards given the proper emphasis on the common assessment instruments (quizes and tests) used by all teachers on the teacher team?

5. Source of Challenge: Does student test performance actually depend on mastering the homework target objectives and not on irrelevant knowledge or skills practice?

As teachers work together to discuss these five formative assessment/homework issues for congruence in the student learning experience, they will generate student assignments that guarantee a more equitable learning experience for all students in the grade level or mathematics course.

As the school year begins, and the homework begins, make sure your collaboratively developed homework assignments meet these research affirmed (TILSA, 2005) alignment agreements. The collaborative adult communication required to make this happen is not easy. It requires courage. But the payoff for the learning opportunities for all students in the grade level or course has magnified impact!

In Homework Part II, I will review the Five Hallmarks of Good Assignments and provide a few samples for your review and use.