Focus Professional Development for School Improvement

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Warren School District
• 2008-09

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• It has to start at the top.

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• You need a spider to weave the web of
  connection.

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• The school board has to be involved.

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• You have to take it to the team
• The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus
• Audio-Ed Online Executive Briefing
• Whatever It Takes
• Scholastic Audit preparation

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Dont forget the past
• Delta Project
• Smart Initiatives
• Learning 24/7 and/or Teachscape
• Lynn Hanrahan
• Barbara Brown

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Continue to utilize/maximize resources
• Educational Cooperative Job-Alike and Teacher
  Center Committee instructional specialists
  steal and share
• ERZ representatives
• Dr. Marilyn Carpenter High School assessment
  practices
• Dr. Elayne Zimmerly Middle School and new MAT
  teachers

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Principals must be lead learners also
• Must attend and participate become
  transformers rather than copers
• PD based on data
• Must follow-up on PD with focused CWTs
• Have lead teachers/ACSIP chairs play a similar
  supporting role
• Include special education, ESL, technology,
  interventionists in all you do

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Take advantage of the best thing ever . . .
• IFs
• Hold data-driven, focused planning sessions with
  all IFs and principals facilitated by the
  spider web spinner celebrate whats right find
  the energy to address whats wrong
• Where our district-wide literacy approach began

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• DOING WHATS RIGHT
• Cowardice asks the question- Is it safe?
• Expediency asks the question- Is it politic?
• Vanity asks the question- Is it popular?
• But conscience asks the question- Is it right?

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• And
• There comes a time when one must take a position
  that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular
  but one must take it because it is right.

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• What IFs are
• Professional developers/model teachers/team
  players who can focus on the cycle of
  curriculum/instruction/assessment/professional
  development/doing whats right for kids
• What IFs are NOT
• Not evaluative
• Not substitutes
• Not clerical help

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• IFs lead
• Through regularly scheduled grade-level meetings
  departmental meetings and leading sessions
  during professional development days (9 of 10
  provided by district)
• Through whole-building professional development
  comprehensive literacy/ The Write Tools
• Through encouraging and guiding teachers toward
  the 30 additional, pre-approved hours (hours
  61-90) (receive stipend)

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• IFs, aka Instructional Facilitators, focus on
• Facilitating administration of target tests
  facilitating the disaggregating, analyzing,
  interpreting, communicating, and utilizing the
  results of Benchmark/EOC/target tests
• Implementing authentic, comprehensive literacy
  based on achievement test results exploring
  Literacy First
• Implementing and revising 5-a-day problem-solving
  process in math
• Working with remediation programs to provide
  student- and skill-specific pyramid of
  interventions
• Facilitating TIA Total Instructional Alignment
  process
• Leading professional development on the Children
  of Poverty work of Ruby Payne
• Processing individual evaluations of each session
  of professional development and addressing needs
  at the very next session

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Focus on data/achievement results as a means to
  an end, not the end itself
• Get away from too much focus on test scores
  focus on teaching and learning
• Focus on core beliefs, mission, values
• Insist on a district-wide, team approach to data
  (not yours/mine, but ours)

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Dont leave out mentoring
• Provided by Pathwise mentors at WHS 66 of new
  staff are first year UAM MAT teachers
• Provided by IFs who model instructional
  strategies/classroom procedures through the
  professional development they provide
• Required peer visits of master teachers as part
  of mentoring

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Provide job-embedded follow-through
• Emphasize sustained initiatives dont drop a
  program/plan just because teachers are
  complaining
• Assist teachers to develop professional growth
  plans based on student achievement data
• Conduct classroom Walk-Throughs
  (principals/IFs/administration) that focus on
  strategies taught in the professional development
• Conduct informal observations with follow-up
  reflection questions to teachers use PD to focus
  on observed weaknesses lead teachers into
  identifying the weaknesses themselves
• Have a clear understanding of the change process

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Managing Complex Change
CHANGE
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Managing Complex Change
CHANGE
CONFUSION
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Managing Complex Change
CHANGE
CONFUSION
ANXIETY
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Managing Complex Change
CHANGE
CONFUSION
ANXIETY
GRADUAL CHANGE
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Managing Complex Change
CHANGE
CONFUSION
ANXIETY
GRADUAL CHANGE
FRUSTRATION
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Managing Complex Change
Change
Confusion
Anxiety
Gradual Change
Frustration
False Starts
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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Focus on the learning focus on the learners.
  During observations/during instruction, focus on
• Whats the level of student engagement?
• Whats the level of thinking produced in the
  lesson?

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• What are the barriers?
• Time
• Attitude
• Lack of Cooperation
• Personality conflicts

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• What are some solutions to the barriers?
• Scheduled time align district PD days to needs
  AND meet requirements
• Provide teamwork activities give teachers a
  chance to have conversation with each other about
  their instruction
• Provide follow-up to ensure PD is being
  implemented as designed
• Get over it!

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Next Steps
• Administer and incorporate findings from SAI
  survey
• Determine how to evaluate the specific impact of
  PD on student achievement
• Get better at getting better

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REFLECTION TOOLCourtesy of Larry Locke
Kentucky Audit Staff

• Your list for ideas/topics that square
  with your beliefs
• ? Your list for ideas/topics that are still
  circling in your mind for which you need some
  clarification
• ? Your list of at least 3 things that you will
  consider implementing
• Draw your own shape to reflect where you think
  your team is with systems thinking approach to
  PD.

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Questions
• and
• Comments

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Focus Professional Development for School
Improvement

• Mary Jo Wisener, Assistant Superintendent, Warren
  School District, wisenerm_at_warren.k12.ar.us
• Marilyn Johnson, Principal, Eastside Elementary
  School, Warren School District,
  johnsonm_at_warren.k12.ar.us