TURNing point! ~ Guiding Teacher Collaboration

YESterday, it happened!  It was one of those moments coaches dream of and plan for; the pivotal and defining place where harsh reality meets with the hope of ideal. At this juncture a shift began.  It was unceremonious and quiet, but secretly inside I was bursting with excitement. 

Our attempts to provide collaborative time 2 years ago was a bust. Teams turned in weak evidence mostly about how they planned field trips and took care of a variety of important but short-term tasks.  That's not exactly what we had in mind. But, how would they have known  any differently? 

This year I mapped out a goal to move us closer to a real professional learning community.  I needed to craft and share the vision for what PLC looks like. I needed to support their learning. I needed to learn and teach the processes for how to work together, and ...and? That's as far as I got.  Being stuck forced me to ask the questions I always ask teachers:

1. What do you want  for your learner? 

2. What will your students be able to know and do?

3. How will you know they've reached the goal?

4. How will you involve them in knowing the targets?

5. What will you do along the way to refine the learning/teaching process?

Being stuck helped me to pull back. After all, the realization and fleshing-out of the vision was not mine to do.  If I had scripted out the details it would've negated the very thing I wanted for them.

What did I want?

1. Teachers who initiate their own learning.
2. Teachers who have respectful, structured and purposeful, safe dialogue about the job of teaching.
3. Teachers who strive to become leaders; leaders who plan for and facilitate meetings; leaders who set the standard for deeper professional growth.
4. Teachers who look at their own data, work with their team to analyze and decide - objectively - what instructional changes are necessary.
5. Teachers who create, contribute, receive, and encourage growth for themselves and their team.
6. Teachers who study and research what matters most to them.
7. Teachers who are empowered, invigorated, and enCOURAGEd to continue working in a sometimes restrictive and challenging profession!
8. Teachers who are solution-oriented.

So, how did yesterday prove to be a turning point?
This was meeeting # 3 for this particular grade-level. The climate at first? Overwhelmed, frustrated, weary teachers just showing up out of obligation! Only one teacher brought student work, the others didn't have time to collect anything. It was a 3 sentence response from a student on one of the weekly reading tests.  The plan was to follow-up on the learning from a previous meeting and conduct the "Tuning Protocol."  (Secretly, I saw the work sample and was disappointed. What a paltry offering! How were we ever going to get anything out of this?)

Stay tuned...come back soon to see what happened!!