Build your own great pyramid

Do you have a great pyramid at your school?

Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

No-- not a great pyramid of Egypt.

The pyramid that will truly enhance and ensure student learning at your school-- a pyramid of intervention.

In schools that truly focus on learning, creating a pyramid takes a good school to great.

Many good schools today are employing educational research of having teachers work in collaborative teams to focus on one or more essential questions of Professional Learning Community work, whether they are aware of it or not.

The four essential questions, as identified by DuFour, DuFour and Eaker, focus on teachers working in collaborative teams to identify clearly what it is we want students to learn, how we know they are learning it, how we respond when they do not learn it, and how we respond to students who already know it.

The most difficult of these principles to implement is employing systemic intervention for students who are not learning what we are teaching.

Many schools and districts readily lead work on aligning curriculum that all students learn and developing common assessments.

But a pyramid of intervention is the one step that few schools or districts implement.  Typically students are either lucky or unlucky.  Some of them have teachers who analyze data, make instructional decisions based on the data, and employ re-teaching, re-testing, or other intervention strategies.  But some of them don't, and that means all students are not given the opportunity to learn what they have not yet learned  It means that in many rooms, and in many schools, time is the constant instead of learning.

With a school's development of a systemic pyramid of intervention, all students are given the opportunity to learn each of the intended essential learnings in a caring culture and climate of learning.  All teachers utilize intervention strategies, same-subject teams develop team intervention processes, and the school builds a systemic pyramid of intervention.

Our school developed and implemented a pyramid of intervention and it truly made the difference for each student's learning. The bottom of our pyramid was all of the effective school-wide strategies we employed to help every student in our building.  These included the implementation of effective educational research strategies by every teacher, including good instruction, effective feedback, the four questions of PLC work, our freshman transition program, new student program, counseling and scheduling personalization and other whole-school programs.

If a student became unsuccessful academically, behaviorally, or social-emotionally, he or she moved to the next level of support in the pyramid.  Just as collaboration is not invitational, neither is intervention.  The next stage of our pyramid paralleled our RTI process, with teachers, counselors, social works, administrators and other professionals responding to student learning needs.

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

  

A student who was not learning became a learning emergency, with mandated responses by the school staff, including teachers, counselors, and administrators.  These responses also involved the parent and student, with mandated intervention for students struggling academically.  Teachers indicated which students needed extra time and support to learn, and students received Gold Cards mandating intervention.  Mandated intervention lasted 4.5 weeks as grades were monitored at interim and quarterly.  

If students no longer needed intervention, the mandated intervention ended.  If students were still unsuccessful, students continued to receive mandated intervention and may have continued to move up the pyramid.  The last tier of the pyramid was special education referral or highly intensive support. Other options along the way included online curriculum, reduced school day, and possible referral to our district's alternative school.  

Is your school focusing on curriculum mapping and alignment so that all students learn the intended standards and benchmarks?  Great.  Are teachers working in grade-level or same-subject teams to develop common assessments?  Terrific.

So be sure and take the next step.  Who is monitoring the learning?  And who is responding when a student is not learning?  By developing a pyramid of intervention, you are ensuring that each student learns and that the school responds systemically, consistently and purposefully.

Build your own great pyramid.  If the Egyptians could do it centuries ago, so can you.  

Mirror or Window?

How do you respond when despite your best school improvement efforts your school achievement data is largely unchanged?

How do you respond when despite your best motivational targeted efforts, you still have a pocket of staff members who do not outwardly or inwardly support your efforts to move your staff forward in focusing on student learning?

How do you respond when despite presenting and engaging your staff in the best educational research, whether it be PLC, Marzano, Hattie, William, Stiggins, Schmoker, Schlechtly, or others, your school culture and climate is still largely focused on teaching rather than learning?

 In thousands of schools across America, educators-- in fact really great educators-- are engaged in professional development to improve our schools.  There are a myriad of focus areas, including student engagement, technology reform, creativity, walkthroughs, literacy across the curriculum, focusing on instruction, professional learning communities, mindfulness, and others.

Yet, true significant progress in improving student learning, particularly at the secondary level, in reading, math and science, the three focus areas of the PISA International Assessment that ranks world school districts, is largely unchanged in the US.

What about the percentage of students who meet the College Readiness standards on the ACT?  What is the percentage of students in your high school of students who can meet these benchmarks in all areas of the ACT? Despite the validity and reliability of this data in projecting college and career readiness, even the best high schools do not have a significant percentage of their students meeting these standards.

What does it say when our students do not meet well-established global and national standards accepted to be a valid and reliable data?

It says that despite many of the initiatives, few are effective in improving student learning, or schools are ineffective in their implementation, often moving on or changing without allowing time to affect student data positively. Or, principals or superintendents change and even the most effective initiatives fade and lose momentum without a leader keeping the lamp lit and monitoring data progress.

More importantly, how do educators normally respond when we are not successful in our change efforts?

Do we look out the window or in the mirror? Looking out the window means that we seek answers outside of our school for the reasons our student learning data is not significantly improving.

Looking out the window for a solution? (Graphic by digitalart, freedigitalphotos.com)

These reasons are the ones we have known for a number of years-- our students are unprepared for school by their parents: we have a large number of special needs, English Language Learners, and/or economically disadvantaged students.

Other "window" reasons include, but are not limited to some of the following: initiative overload by our own district offices, unfunded mandates by our legislatures, low pay for educators, a shortage of qualified teachers, and a lack of time or money for quality professional development.

And yes-- many of us see only these external influences when we examine our student learning data.

But what if we looked in the mirror? Richard DuFour discussed this concept of window or mirror in his educational research involving Professional Learning Community work. He clearly demonstrates the power of looking in the mirror to positively affect student learning.

Can we look in the mirror for our solutions? ( Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com)

When our schools face challenges, what if teacher-leaders, administrators and educators chose to look in the mirror?  That is, what if we decided to focus on our learning problems ourselves by developing a culture and climate systemically focused on student learning?

What if we chose to embed collaboration time in the school day so that 100% of our teachers could focus on 100% of our students each day? By doing so, how much would our school data improve if we chose to ensure that each student learned the intended curriculum?  What if we chose to develop valid and reliable assessments with clear learning targets in same-subject teams?

What if teachers analyzed data regularly in same-subject teams and provided intervention to each student who did not meet the established team SMART goal for student learning? What if every teacher utilized student performance as feedback to him/her on their instructional effectiveness?

And what if that same-subject team provided enriching instruction and support for those students who already know the materials before we teach it? What if every teacher committed to improving learning for every student?

Each of these questions mirrors the four essential questions of Professional Learning Community work as first established by Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker.

Want to truly improve your student learning? Then be a leader of leaders in your school organization and, utilizing research that focuses on student learning, devote every day to transforming your school culture to one of learning rather than teaching.

In The Six Secrets of Change, Michael Fullan states that schools must focus on consistency or what we do every day while simultaneously instituting innovation.  The fourth secret, "Learning is the work," states that schools should and can focus on improving classroom instruction and build continuous improvement into the culture of the organization, monitoring each student's learning and responding to it through personalization.

Are there external challenges in education? Absolutely.  Do some schools have more than others? Yes. But rather than try one initiative after another one, we should establish goals that focus on student learning, monitor learning progress, and stick to them.

It won't be easy.  It takes passion and persistence and a longterm systemic focus.

And don't look out the window-- look in the mirror.

You can't FastPass your school improvement work

Our society seemingly is obsessed with instant gratification. Fast food wasn't enough. We had to add drive-through lanes. Now grocery stores deliver our food orders to our cars.

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

We recently visited a new outlet mall near our hometown and chose a pizza place for lunch.  It featured a wood-fired oven where once you picked out your ingredients, the pizza took 160 seconds to cook and then delivered to your table. Now that's fast. 

You can get your oil-changed in 15 minutes and using, Apps on your phone, shop and communicate instantly.  On Amazon you can choose 2-hour shipping and have your order delivered to your home almost instantly.

We no longer have to wait to call someone and see if they are home to talk to them.  (Yes-- at one time we really had to do that!) We can text, instant message or FaceTime someone immediately.  And we expect an immediate response from them.

Thirty or 60 days prior to your arrival to Disney World (depending on where you are staying) you can choose to FastPass which 3 attractions to "start your fun" without waiting in line.  

We all hate to wait on anything anymore.  Automatic and fast service and products seem to govern our lives.

And what about our work in education?  Is it any wonder that districts and buildings often choose to jump from one educational reform initiative to another, often fatiguing educators who have learned to endure the Flavor of the Month or Year professional development wheel.

Why? Because often administrators and other central office personnel do not see impactful results soon enough or are not focused on student learning to begin with.  Someone goes to a conference, and without fully weighing the initiative's potential impact on their specific building or district data, implements it.  No wonder well-intentioned reforms have little or no impact on student learning.

If we as educators truly believe that improving student learning is our best hope of changing student lives, then we must commit to only those initiatives supported by the best educational research. 

As a high school principal involved in leading Professional Learning Community (PLC) work for over nine years, I learned it takes longterm commitment to a focus on student learning by all key stakeholders to truly impact student learning positively.

Photo by Exsodus, freedigitalphotos.net

In working with schools now in initial stages of PLC work as a Thought Leader and consultant, one of the initial important steps is emphasizing that PLC work is a process and journey rather than a destination.  It requires commitment to excellence, ongoing professional development on the four questions, collaboration with staff, parents and students, and a sustained  and systemic focus on student learning rather than teaching.

You can't give up because data does not improve dramatically in the short term for it requires longterm commitment and dedication to student learning for success to emerge.  Our school was recognized as National Model PLC at Work School by Solution Tree and a National Blue Ribbon School because of a systemic focus on student learning.  It takes time to develop a school culture and climate of learning rather than teaching.

Whatever reform work your school or district is engaged, choose one that has proven results in improving student learning.  

If it does, know that this ride does not have a FastPass to success. And unlike Disney, our students cannot get back on this ride again.  Make each day, each class period, count for each student. As student learning improves,  hope blossoms.  And there is no instant recipe for that. 

Setting norms: A crucial step in collaboration

Working on setting up a collaborative culture and climate focused on learning?
Teachers collaborating in same-subject or grade-level teams within the school day?
Aligning to your mission and vision?
Focusing on aligning to the Professional Learning Community (PLC) 4 questions?

Sounds like you are on your way to a transformational change in your school.  For those of us on the PLC journey, we know it is not a destination, but reflective and result-oriented work that will change your culture from a focus on teaching to one of learning.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitialphotos.com

One other extremely important step that is crucial to the success of your PLC journey is establishing norms to establish the conditions of collaborative work in same-subject or grade-level teams.

In Whole Child Blog, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Professional Learning Community," Steven Weber identified a lack of norms as one dysfunction of PLC teams.

He stated the "team norms are the foundation of a PLC." He continued, "When teams operate with norms, each member of the team understands how to communicate, how shared decisions will be handled, when to arrive for meetings, and how to professionally disagree."

In Learning by Doing, A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many encourage schools employing PLC principles to have same-subject or grade-level teams set norms as one of the most important and initial steps in the collaborative process.

They state that as teachers work through a process to create explicit norms and commit to them, "they will begin to function as a collaborative team rather than a loose collection of people working together." (p.103)

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com

At the beginning of every year, our same-subject teams each established norms.  Examples included each team member being on time and present, coming prepared, being active listeners, and adhering to the 4 PLC questions as part of each agenda, etc.

After several years of having teams set their own norms, some departments decided to create collaboratively common department norms for each same-subject team to use during our embedded collaboration time.  They also utilized these norms for departmental meetings.

In time, it became clear that our team/departmental norms, submitted via Google forms, overlapped.  As we met with our department chairs we then all decided to adopt common building norms for our embedded collaboration time as well as every other meeting we hold, including staff meetings, department chair meetings, department meetings and PLC collaboration time.

In order to accomplish this, each team submitted their team norms via a Google form which we shared with the entire staff.  We then asked each staff member to identify the norms most important to them.  At our next collaboration time, we then asked the teams to also identify the norms most important to the team. Eventually through a collaborative process, we culled the list of norms to 10 and then to between 3-5 norms.  We then had our department chairs submit the wording they wanted for the final wording.

We included the norms on every agenda and stated the norms at the beginning of each meeting.  The norms became who we were and how we did business.  In PLC work, teams will disagree.  As Steven Weber observed, "Some teams feel like they can operate without norms, but conflict or a dysfunctional team member usually highlights the purpose of norms."

In your PLC journey, it is important to continually remind everyone in action and words the alignment and adherence of all to the mission and vision of learning.

Establishing norms, publishing norms, and committing to norms is essential to transform your school through PLC principles and a focus on learning.

The "edge" makes the difference

The Chase. The Grind. The Edge.

If these words do not make sense to you, then chances are you are not a fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes.  Each of these describes the last three seasons' mantras for the football team.

Coach Urban Meyer defined this year's "The Edge" as "where average stops and elite begins." But this is not about football, nor Ohio State.

As a 15-year high school administrator deeply involved in PLC implementation and now Thought Leader dedicated to transforming schools through PLC work and a focus on learning, I have always been intrigued by how we move schools from average to elite. How do we get to "The Edge?"

Photo courtesy of Jeff and Becca Rudzinski

In our work at our high school, and now in working with other schools and districts, it is easy to note that moving an average school, particularly a public school,  to elite has to be more difficult than moving a football team.

Those involved in transforming schools through action research and a focus on learning know that some PLC steps are easier introduce, implement and sustain than others.

For example, most districts, schools, and staff see the benefit and fairly easily adapt and embrace aligning curriculum collaboratively by teachers in same-subject teams (PLC Question 1, DuFour, Eaker, Professional Learning Communities at Work, 1998).

And many schools, districts and staffs, with the support of professional development, are in ongoing work on improving diagnostic, formative and summative assessments, leading to better common assessments and data analysis by teacher teams (Question 2, DuFour, Eaker).  This is difficult work and paradigms on teaching and learning are challenged as teachers learn to give up past and often archaic assessment practices.  Even question 4, responding to students who already know the material, is met with classroom and same-subject team strategies of differentiation and building enrichment fairly readily.

But the one that keeps most staffs, schools and districts from reaching the edge, from transforming from average to elite, is Question 3 of PLC work, "How do we respond when students are not learning?" (DuFour, Eaker)

How many schools or districts have systemic and mandatory student intervention as a goal?  Learning target work, yes.  Assessment? Yes.  But intervention?  Only the elite.

Intervention by invitation never works, and in order to truly transform teacher and learning in your school, in all schools, we must enact systemic, mandatory student intervention.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com

Aligning curriculum and enacting common assessments will only take a school or district so far.  Our school only dramatically improved student learning after we became much better at setting SMART goals and monitoring student learning, every student's learning, by teacher, grade level and by individual student, and then by responding to students not learning.

Teachers certainly enacted classroom student intervention as good teachers always have, but now same-subject teams also discussed appropriate team invention strategies based on data analysis. In a PLC, intervention is not optional for staff or students.

Furthermore, whole-school intervention ensued, for students who are not learning become a learning emergency in an elite, rather than average, school.

We knew the name of every student who had a D or F every 4.5 weeks and responded as a building, with counselors, teachers and administrative support.  And expectations for students were also clear as we provided mandated opportunities for them to learn outside of class and within the school day because cared about them and their future so much.

Did our results improve?  Immensely.  We were recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School and a National Model PLC at Work School. We emerged as one of the top schools in Ohio for our Performance Index score, number of National Merit Finalists and perfect ACT scores.  Globally, we also outscored the world's highest performing school district, Shanghai, in all three testing areas of the PISA-- reading, math and science.

But more importantly--

The more we responded to students who were not learning, the more our students learned.  The more they learned, the more doors that were open to them.  The more doors open, the more lives changed.

And that is The Edge.  That is moving from being average to elite.

It is not a destination, but an ongoing journey every day, in every classroom, every period, for every student.

The time is now

"In pursing perfection we can achieve excellence."

The time is now.

It is 2016, and we are well into the 21st century.  I spent 15 years of the 21st century as a high school administrator, and nine of those as principal of one of America's highest-performing high schools by a number of external indicators.  

These include being named a Blue Ribbon High School, one of only 21 public high schools in the nation to be named so in 2010.  We also took the PISA, and our students outperformed the highest-performing school district, Shanghai, in all three areas of the test, reading, math and science. We also ranked highly in our state perennially on the state graduation test.  Our staff's dedication and commitment to Professional Learning Community principles resulted in our recognition as a National Model PLC at Work School.

Being result-focused helped crystallize our mission of changing students' lives.  Frankly, it is one thing to say you are a great school; it is quite another to work it prove it over and over again in a cycle of continuous improvement.

Today, I enjoyed lunch with one of our recent graduates.  With great joy I listened to his hopes and dreams for his future as he enters college as a first-year student with sophomore status. I loved hearing about his reflection on being an International Baccalaureate Diploma graduate.  His insight into what high school was and should be was an impressive discourse on our high school and on our educational system.

Our school opened in 2004 as a Professional Learning Community and our success at focusing on student learning increased as we came together as a school community of students, parents, and staff. We did business differently than most high schools by focusing on the four questions of PLC work, and our results blossomed as a result, as did our student engagement and efficacy. 

Part of the reason is that we opened with a sense of urgency, as our students came from our community's other two high schools.  Our community has high expectations and values education, crucial to our students' success, and as a new school we had no credentials.  We had no secondary school report, no list of colleges and universities that our graduates attended, no average ACT or SAT scores, no AP scores, and no Ohio Graduation Test data.

We also had zero years of engaging in the best instructional practices, the best educational research, and our professional learning community work.

And so for us the time had to be now.  The time was now to start our PLC work, to start our data history, and most importantly, to start changing student lives.

Why? Because each one of the students who were in our classes every period every day deserved the best education we could collaborate with our students and their parents to create and provide.

Now, in my work with other districts, other administrators and staff, and other buildings as an Thought Leader, I most want to encourage this same sense of urgency.

The time is now to improve our schools.  We should be working with a sense of urgency.

Photo courtesy of sheelamohan, freedigitalphotos.com

Research states that substantive change in high schools takes 8-10 years, middle school 6-8 years and elementary 3-5 years.

It is too long.  We must change now. Why? For the students who in less than a month will enter our doors all over the nation.

For some reason we feel we must take time to research, discuss, collaborate, reflect, and take baby steps so that the adults in our buildings can become comfortable and better own the change. As professionals we want to discourse and debate.  And certainly we must learn together as a professional learning community and utilize our data to inform our practices. 

But for a high school that is starting the change process now that means it may be 2024-2026 before substantive change occurs.  That is too late for the thousands of students who will graduate in that time.

The research is clear. Professional Learning Community work affects positively a whole-school focus on student learning. John Hattie's Visible Learning is clear on what truly affects student learning in classrooms.  Dylan William's Formative Assessment work on effective feedback also positively affects student learning. 

Now is the time to come together and implement it.  We must act, today and tomorrow. Every day take a step to change ineffective instructional and systemic practices in schools and districts that have little or zero effect on student learning.

August is coming.  Are you ready to change?  The time is now.  We must have the vision to see what needs done, the faith to believe we can do it, and the courage to do it.

Differences, disagreements and dislikes: what can we do?

When my daughter graduated from The Ohio State University, former president Bill Clinton served as  the graduation speaker. All politics aside,  I had never heard him speak before and looked forward to hearing not only his message but how he would deliver it to a stadium crowd of students, faculty and parents.

A mesmerizing speaker, one quote has always stuck in my mind.  Encouraging the students to embrace others in life, he stated, "Just because you are different from someone does not mean you have to disagree, and just because you disagree doesn't mean you have to dislike."

The quote returned to my mind yesterday during a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Columbus, returning home after visiting my family.  While still on the ground in Phoenix at the airport, their faces were fresh in my memory and the time we had spent together shopping in Scottsdale, sitting at the Rusty Spur, enjoying lunch at the Tempe Loco Patron that my niece and husband own and manage.

I reflected on our laughter and joy in hosting her baby shower to help welcome her son due in October and the girls' trip to the Diamondbacks game.  I am blessed to have such a loving and fun family.

As the plane ascended higher and higher into the clouds, I could see the homes below get smaller and smaller.  What a grand country we have! But why did much of our visit involve conversations of another police ambush, this time in Baton Rouge, a coup in Turkey, and hatred and violence in our world.

The view from the air of our country -- we are more alike than different.

But from above I reflected on the hundreds and thousands of homes we were flying above.  As we flew east shades of brown and mountains yielded to plains of green and crisscrossed roads.  Though I could not see individuals or families, I knew they were there.  Different cultures, different races all looked the same from high in the clouds.  As we neared Indiana and then Ohio and began our descent, rooftops and automobiles on roads became clearer.  Again, so many similarities from above.  Home after home, highway after highway.

So much of America is beautiful.  It became so clear to me.  We are all more alike than we are different.  We smile, have friends, families. Certainly we have different structures for homes, different incomes, schools, religions and races, but the same basic human needs and feelings.

As we turned to land, I looked down more closely and wondered why we were so quick to disagree with someone from whom we are different, so inclined to dislike those with whom we disagree.

The closer we get to each other seems to illuminate our individual differences.

As a high school principal I also saw the potential for these negative reactions each day in our high school.  Schools, particularly high schools, are microcosms of our society.  Our children are inundated by negativity on social media, their news sources.  Even in our Professional Learning Community work, some staff same-subject teams seemed plagued by disagreements leading to dislike. We focused as adults on our own positive motivation, work culture and climate in our professional learning community.  It was vital work for our success. But what about our work with students?

As building leaders and educators, how can we work to promote a culture of hope and caring in our schools?

1. Build a culture and climate where every student counts every day in words and deeds.  Look at the leadership teams in clubs and organizations, even in your own Principal Advisory Committees.  Do they reflect the diversity of your building?  Does your staff promote diversity in ability, race, gender, and culture when advising student organizations and in the selection of their leadership teams?  What about non-academic student recognition? Do they also reflect the diversity of the student body? If we are to create schools of hope, we must make sure each student feels recognized and respected.

2. Continue to focus on student learning every day.  Not every student is likable every day in some teachers' eyes, and in student eyes neither is every teacher.  If your culture focuses on learning every day in every period, teachers focus on student success in a caring culture and climate.  PLC work also fosters creative and improved instructional strategies that heighten student engagement.  Our same-subject teams collaborated and implemented experiential learning opportunities that helped make learning relevant and important.  As a result, our school discipline problems and student-student, student-teacher conflicts dropped significantly while student achievement increased.  The more students who succeed in their goals the more positive the school culture and climate.

3. Create casual spaces within your building where students can gather informally.  Is your media center inviting?  Do you have furniture grouped around your building so that students can collaborate formally and informally, getting to know other students on a personal level as well as collegially? Having conversations with others fosters trust and caring among students.  We enacted incentives for students who continued to make good academic and behavioral decisions that allowed them the freedom to go to various seating areas, enhancing our culture and climate of trust and caring.

While we cannot necessarily solve our problems of hatred and violence so prevalent today in our country in the world, we also cannot ignore it.  Making students aware that we are all more alike than different, and that we do not have to disagree and dislike in our schools may just help change the world one person at a time,