Introducing the Blog

My school has three main goals this year:

1) adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS),

2) expanding our use of the "21st century skills," and

3) collaboration and team work.

Because we are are dual-language school, we will also align our second language goals (Hebrew) with the Language Arts goals in the CCSS.

How will we do this? In the spring of 2011 we introduced the standards to the teachers. Many reviewed them over the summer. But now it's time to support them through the process!

Fundamental Decision: The best support is to teach them how to support themselves and their colleagues.

During the year our teachers will actually support one another by

1) analyzing their student work

2) analyzing live lessons

Ok- so now what? How do we prepare them to help each other? It's easy to say to them: Be accountable. Teach standards 1, 2, and 3, etc..... And while you are at it, make sure you teach 21st century skills - skills related to innovation and learning, and skills related to life and career. (More on that on another blogpost.)

We first need to establish a collaborative culture! Teachers need to feel comfortable opening up and sharing. They need a safe container. They need to know that this is not evaluative. We are trying to help children. And we are helping each other help children.

So how do we that?? We began during our week of orientation. We modeled what we wanted to achieve. First we built a garden together. Literally. We dug, weeded, planted, mulched, built. We transformed space. We transformed our team. We transformed individuals. We demonstrated how, with team work and collaboration, we CAN achieve results! We created a Garden of Eden that our students will now maintain and use.

But that's only a beginning! We can build together, but can we talk to each other? And we need to talk to each other about how we instruct children - a bit more personal. It's our career. So we began practicing habits -habits of pausing and paraphrasing as we listen to our colleagues. And we modeled once again - that is, I modeled. Jen (our top notch educator who is helping us adopt the CCSS) and I dialogued - spontaneously, on the spot. I started talking about schools using social media (my choice of topics) - all the challenges and opportunities, and she responded to make sure she was understanding my thoughts and my thought process. At one point, she pushed me forward - she thought ahead and paraphrased where I was going, without it even being said. It made the collaboration even tighter. Teachers jotted down all the non-verbals and all the evidence of pausing (for reflection) and paraphrasing. "So...are you saying that you are hesitant about proceeding?" "No, I would say more 'cautiously optimistic'."

What is next? Teachers need to learn more habits - how to inquire and how to probe. They need to learn how to present student work, and how to be "observed" in the classroom. We also need some time to reflect with them where they are at in the process - experimenting yet or just plain overwhelmed. We have to meet every teacher where every teacher is at. One at a time.