A. Thinking from Principals – The ‘Now What?’ Tree
Four distinct themes emerged from the thinking principals offered on the ‘Now What?’ Tree.
These were:
1.
We need to leverage the CI learning, either at Principal Meetings or through professional learning sessions with other administrators
2.
We need to support staff – by getting more focussed and digging deeper, with gathering evidence and with mathematics pedagogy
3.
We need to better understand the most urgent student learning needs. This will help us connect our own learning needs (teacher and administrator) in support of our students
4.
We need to monitor the CI in our schools and focus more precision within the stages
B. Next Steps – Your Commitment:
So What? Now What?
Make a commitment as a leader. Your ‘next best’ leadership move in Stage __ is _________ .
What did you do? Why did you do what you did? How did it go? How do you know?
What did you learn?
The purpose of the “Think-a-thon” session was to reflect on and discuss how you might respond to the challenges and obstacles emerging from the different stages of your Collaborative Inquiry work.
The following are the verbatim notes complied from this carousel activity.
C: Collation of ‘Think-a-thon’ Notes – Key Ideas and Conversations
Stage 1: Framing the Problem
Do we really believe that educator actions will improve student learning?
Return to Katz “inch wide, mile deep”
Start with the end in mind
Need more time
Tendency to rush through this stage
Even questions that don’t ‘burn’ are questions – starting points
Redirecting/focusing of ‘superficial’ problems (i.e. Student attendance will improve engagement
– not necessarily true)
We are finally coming to the point of developing burning questions…. It has taken a cultural shift

We are still learning to ask ‘good questions’
Is the problem of practice meaningful to the work of the teacher?
Trying to do too much – no focus
No evidence gathered to support/prove that the problem is really a problem
How do we get to the root of the problem?
Student voice… engage them in the questions we are asking… they often have more creative solutions
We often want to focus on intuitive problems instead of grounding ourselves in the student work and the content of the work
Strategy for narrow Problem of Practice – ensure it is rooted in instructional core (has all 3 elements)
Not everyone deeply understands the problem
Reluctance to focus on one learning need, trying to do too much. Focus on student work using qualitative data.
Be specific about where the breakdown in understanding is
We don’t know what we don’t know (stated numerous times) – and that is OK (how can that need be addressed?)
Educators are fragile when it comes to admitting they need to learn something
Sometimes it is hard to admit that we don’t know everything
Misunderstanding of strategies and how to leverage them effectively causes barriers to moving forward
It has been a difficult shift to acknowledge that student learning need is grounded in what we don’t know…. yet
Educators don’t always see that they may have needs to be addressed…. Not just student need focus
Principal needs to have a discerning focus, keep asking questions, to help teachers to develop a meaningful question of inquiry/if/then statement
Principal must understand and support that the student need may also be a need of the teacher
Need more expertise
Be open to change, growth is not a negative thing
Stage 2: Collecting Evidence
Still struggling with what valuable data is
Do we truly understand what the data is telling us?
Sometimes confusion about evidence/data to help us see our impact
We are still learning how to gather evidence from our documentation
Inconsistency with understanding the data
EQAO is trailing data – not a ‘wait and see’ outlook
We need to look at data trends (over time) in things like EQAO so we can see growth
EQAO doesn’t help us monitor during the year
Pressure from parents for quantitative data is a big influence on educators

Where is Growing Success? Make sure the evidence is linked to the student learning need
Strategies to use: o Target check-in data along the way o Teacher survey data/exit cards at networks o Student voice o Moderation of student work with an asset model o Develop success criteria for identified goals, developed with/by teachers o Use communication tool to explore Rich Tasks in every subject area
Evidence identifies a learning need – we are struggling with a clear understanding of developing criteria to meet that need
How do we monitor what changes are happening (teachers and administrators)?
Educators have difficulty knowing how to record, track, etc. observations and conversations that demonstrate student learning
Struggles between quantitative and qualitative – what do we monitor?
Need to define ‘tangible’ evidence so that it is not ‘product’ only
Progress is being made with conversations and observations as viable assessment tools
Professional confidence using qualitative data needs to be further developed
Hope that with each cycle of CIL, evidence collections will be more focused, productive, precise.
Focus and stay the course
Outside of CIL release time, how do we sustain the momentum and conversations (ie. Can’t do
PD at staff meetings)
Make sure everything is job embedded and developed by staff
We need to dig, dig, dig… student only have learning needs because we, their teachers, don’t understand
Stage 3: Analyzing Evidence
How to develop a learning culture…
How to keep the student forefront…
From event to culture
When it starts to be internalized you can hear educators talking about the data in everyday conversations outside of the ‘structured’ time
Need to have daily conversations with teachers
Keep the plan alive at staff/division meetings

Relationships and trust are critical to this work at this stage
Establish group norms, focus on student work – curriculum, big idea, reasoning, content of the work
Bring student work and student voice to the table - do
Focus reflection on student strengths, needs – give student voice - what
Active effort of teacher during the learning to observe/question/interact with the students
Lack of teacher reflection – need teachers to understand this is not about teacher performance o Co-learning, teaching o Leverage someone to model/share (the ‘backdoor teacher’)
Research is needed – we don’t know what we don’t know – we grab on to what others are doing because we don’t know what to do
We need to further formalize our reflection and consolidate collaboratively… so we can all express the legacy of learning – next steps?
Asset model for moderation/reflection – find out where the students are at, what IS present in the work to help move them forward
We need the commitment to look at student needs across classroom so we can better see the need
Critical when looking at data if we have not built in criteria then the data is overwhelming and hard to unpack
We are working towards developing a clear criteria that better connects tasks and desired outcomes
Teacher understanding of using data has improved through the CI process (more accepted)
Time and experience have helped us get better – we are beginning to dig deeper now
LAST protocol (project zero, Harvard)
Stage 4: Documenting, Celebrating, and Sharing
Make an effort to celebrate the success throughout the process
Intentionally plan for celebrations (i.e. Staff meetings, weekly memos)
What process can we put in place to celebrate regularly?
Promote growth mindsets to accept that learning can happen from failures
There is always a win – we learn from our mistakes – growth mindset
Small wins can be really small and need to be recognized on an on-going basis
‘Debriefs’ don’t need to be big events
We wait too long to meet to reflect upon which strategies will lead us to our goals
Building an assess and reflect component into each part of the learning cycle
Targeted check-ins are essential

Need to define tangible evidence
Online site to place our thinking and documentation and engage in the conversations between structured time (i.e. OneNote)
Let’s consider May/June as our starting planning sessions for the following year
How do we define success? LEARNING is success – not necessarily improvement
So What? Now What?
Keep those ‘events’ embedded in practice