GVSU Learning Network
Improving Learning and Teaching
August 2015

• What has been your greatest instructional success?
Note: “instructional success” is purposefully vague.

Individual Introductions
• In 1 minute or less, introduce yourself . . .
– Name
– School
– Role
– Your greatest instructional success
• With time remaining , discuss any common themes running through your success stories.

School Team
Introductions
• In 45 seconds or less, introduce your school team by:
– Telling us something unique about your school
– Telling us something about who is on your team
AND
– A piece of advice for a team new to our community OR
– A question you have about this community

As a table, identify a single norm that, if adopted and abided, would optimize collective and individual learning.

Day 1
• Welcome, introductions, norms, agenda
• Critical data points
• Greenhouse Schools in
Boston: Text-based discussion
• Discussing the Instructional
Core—video observation exercise
• Improvement Science Tool:
Ishikawa Diagram
(Fishbone)
Day 2
• Skills workshop: Meeting your students’ learning styles needs
• Improvement Science Tool:
Driver Diagram
• Cross-Team Feedback:
Interrogating the Driver
Diagram
• Team Work Time and Action
Planning

How do we improve teaching, learning and outcomes for our students?

Percentage of instructional and instructionalrelated expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools
Source: National Center for Educational Statistics
Copyright © 2014 Connecticut Center for School Change, Hartford, CT. All Rights Reserved .
© 2009 THE EDUCATION TRUST

Potential impact of teachers with varying performance
Student Performance on SAT 9 Reading Open-Ended Test
Source:
Measures of Effective Teaching Project, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
© 2009 THE EDUCATION TRUST

Impact of teacher performance over time
Source:
Heather Jordan, Robert Mendro, and Dash Weerasinghe, The Effects of Teachers on Longitudinal Student Achievement, (1997)
© 2009 THE EDUCATION TRUST

Impact of teacher effectiveness on earnings
Source: www.hanushek.stanford.edu
Copyright © 2014 Connecticut Center for School Change, Hartford, CT. All Rights Reserved .
© 2009 THE EDUCATION TRUST

“One of the best-kept secrets in educational research, it seems, is the fact that differences in the quality of instruction from classroom to classroom within schools are greater than differences in instructional quality between schools.”
Robert Rothman, Harvard Education Letter

“Much of what passes for “change” in U.S. schooling is not really about changing the core (teaching and learning in the classroom) . . .
The Changes are often not explicitly connected to fundamental changes in the way knowledge is constructed, nor the division of responsibility between teacher and student, the way students and teacher interact with each other around knowledge, or any of a variety of stable conditions in the core.”
Richard Elmore, Harvard Educational Review

Team Discussion—What Are the Most
Critical Teaching, Learning and
Achievement Problems (Challenges)
Faced By Your School At This Point in
Time?

Quick Questions on Instructional
Culture
• On a Likert scale of 1-7, 1 being Strongly Disagree and 7 being Strongly Agree . . .
1. The expectations for effective teaching are clearly defined at my school.
2. Teachers at my school share a common vision of what effective teaching looks like.
3. My school is committed to improving my instructional practice. Or, if not a teacher, My school is committed to improving the instructional practice of teachers.

Text-Based Discussion
Part 1: Cross-School Final Word Protocol
Preparation: Identify a single passage from the text that most spoke to you (for any range of reasons) and be prepared to explain.

Text-Based Discussion
Part 1: Cross-School Final Word Protocol
Presenter: Read the passage that spoke to you and explain what it was about this passage that made it so meaningful (3 minutes).
Responder 1: Respond to the passage and/or to the explanation the presenter provided (2 minutes).
Responder 2: Respond to the passage, explanation the presenter provided, and/or the thoughts of responder 1 (2 minutes).
Responder 3: Respond to the passage, explanation the presenter provided, and/or the thoughts of responders 1 & 2
(2 minutes).
Presenter: Final opportunity to speak about your passage and or any of the ideas presented in the conversation (1 minute).
Total time for one rotation with 4 group members: 10 minutes

If you are finished . . .
• Lunch is served.
• Be back and ready to go at 1pm, please.

• Discuss your big takeaways from the crossteam conversations.
• What implications, if any, does the conversation have for your school?

• Consistent Learning Environments That Enable a
Focus on Student Growth
• Teacher Development Through Observation,
Feedback and Peer Modeling
• Early Hiring with a High Bar
• Right Responses to Good (and Bad) Performance

Strong Instructional
Culture
1. The expectations for effective teaching are clearly defined at my school.
2. Teachers at my school share a common
vision of what effective teaching looks like.
3. My school is committed to improving my
instructional practice.

Final Thought from Conclusion
School leaders elsewhere might consider looking for—or creating—opportunities for networking across schools within their own sectors. By making a commitment to the greenhouse schools practices across a handful of schools within a district or charter sector (or, ideally, between district and charter schools), school leaders may be able to push each other to improve results across the sector. One thing is clear: Boston’s success with students isn’t good luck; smart, strategic choices on the part of school leaders are contributing to the development of school environments where teachers can do their best work, and students are benefitting as a result.

Learning and Teaching in the Classroom
A Descriptive Framework
Environment
Teacher
Task
Student
Content

• What do you see?
• What are the fundamental patterns of teaching and learning?

• How well does this episode of teaching and learning match your school’s instructional model?
• Imagine this classroom exists within school.
What are the most critical areas of improvement?
• What are the ways in which this teacher would improve his practice if he worked in your school
(with its given systems, structures and processes)?

Fishbone: Root Cause Analysis Tool

Fishbone Diagram
Directions
• Identify and clarify the problem statement.
Place the statement in the problem box.
• Individually brainstorm the possible causes of the problem (on contributing causes of the problem).
• Share, discuss, and organizes the causes.
Place the larger categories at the top of the bones and the related sub-cause down the bone.

Analyzing Your Fishbone
• Using some coding scheme of your choosing, identify:
– 1. Low-hanging fruit—easy-to-solve, technical challenges that can be solved with minimal investment
– 2. Minor issues—causes not worth thinking any more about
– 3. Contributing causes that are beyond your power or influence
– 4. High-leverage causes—challenging causes that if you could resolve would have a large payoff for students

Part I: Presenter shows and discusses the “draft” fishbone (5 minutes)
Part II: Colleagues should think aloud about what they see in the driver diagram (5 minutes)
– What may be missing?
– How confident are you that the primary causes are THE causes?
– Are the causes within the scope of influence of the individual/team/organization?
– How compelling is they coding schedule they have produced
ONLY COLLEAGUES TALK
Part III: Presenters talk about what they heard and anything they want to think more about (3 minutes).
ONLY PRESENTERS TALK

What else do you need?
• Materials
• Resources
• Means of networking