In two previous posts, I’ve discussed the challenges faced by educators and students in Tarrant City Schools and highlighted our recent retreat with a Tarrant leadership team and some of the important things I’ve learned about school improvement as a result of ABPC’s two-year partnership with the Birmingham-area district.
In this final post, I’m going to focus of some of the actions taking place in Tarrant to advance student learning. What is most important, I think, is the system’s determination to “be transparent” in their learning. When problems are uncovered, the first response is: How do we improve this?
This past year, the focus of ABPC’s professional development activities among our Networks and partner districts was on formative assessment and student engagement. Using Alabama’s new Continuum for Teacher Development and resources like Instructional Rounds: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning by Elmore, City, et al., we helped Tarrant instructional leaders gauge their current reality and develop plans to ensure that students are engaged in every classroom in ways that motivate them to learn more and be successful.
Tarrant helped lead the way to this new focus. During the 2009-2010 school year, we worked with Tarrant Elementary to develop a “problem of practice,” which, according to the authors of Instructional Rounds, is “something that you care about that would make a difference for student learning if you improved it.” Because our focus was on student engagement, Tarrant Elementary developed a related practice problem:
For the past two years, the central focus of our professional
development has concentrated on consistently incorporating a variety
of student engagement strategies, increasing student engagement
opportunities for all students, as well as providing students with
high-quality independent work and work stations.
We want to know the frequency and variety of student engagement
strategies and opportunities, opportunities for students to work
cooperatively, and evidence of high-quality student work.
• What kinds of tasks are students being asked to do in the classroom?
• What is the level to which students are engaged?
In Spring of 2010, Tarrant Elementary principal Shelly Mize and her assistant principal Sherlene McDonald (who is now the principal of TES) invited their principal colleagues and teacher leaders from the other three schools to participate in an Instructional Round focused on that problem of practice. She also welcomed outside guests from another school district, the state department of education, and two superintendents interested in learning more about Rounds.
“What we learned that day was startling,” says former Tarrant Elementary principal Shelly Mize, who became district superintendent in 2010-11. “We found that many of our differentiated instruction strategies really had students learning parallel to each other rather than learning together.” She explained that often students were working side-by-side on a specific assignment, but that they were primarily working by themselves rather than collaborating together to reach a common understanding.
“It took outside eyes from educators outside of our district to help us focus on that problem,” says Beth McDavid, Tarrant’s director of instruction. “The elementary school had made such progress and we were so excited by what we saw, that we missed the parallel learning dilemma,” she added. Beth told me that because teachers had been involved in developing the problem of practice, they were able to receive that feedback in a non-defensive way and went to work to ensure that students were actually learning together, not side-by-side. That’s a characteristic I associate with a high functioning and mature professional learning community.
Measuring Progress – Tarrant Intermediate
If you’d walked into any of the classrooms of Tarrant Intermediate (4-6) in early May, you would have seen evidence of this past year’s focus on formative assessment and feedback. Students and teachers worked together to demonstrate learning, frequently referencing student-friendly learning targets posted on classroom walls. These mostly “I can” statements replace the often cumbersome verbiage found in Alabama’s official Courses of Study documents, which are written more for teachers, not for students. Teachers at Tarrant Intermediate worked together in 2010-11 to create these “translations” for students. Here’s a good example: “I can generalize information beyond the text” means I can find how several examples are alike and make a statement that is true for them and is also true for other cases like them.” – Chappuis, 2009, p. 25
Because of these clear learning targets, students now know what is expected of them. As they guide students through lessons and units, teachers are focused on constantly measuring students’ progress toward the learning target and are conscious of the need to provide “just-in-time” feedback for students who are off track or need some extra instruction. They’re also helping their students learn to monitor their own progress so they can take greater ownership of their own learning.
According to Tarrant Intermediate Principal Judy Matthews, “Our students make a pledge every day to take academic responsibility and strive for excellence. We put in place quarterly student-led parent, teacher report card conferences for all students this past year. Those conferences generated an amazing amount of positive communication and parental support that we will continue to build upon in the upcoming school year.
Reaching for Excellence
Things are happening at the middle and high school as well. Only a few years ago, both the middle and high school principals were spending all their time on discipline and were frustrated that they couldn’t focus on improving instruction in the building. According to THS Principal Andrew Smith, the focus on formative assessment and feedback showed them a way to shift most of that focus to instruction. “The regular use of formative assessment gives our teachers another way to monitor student progress and adjust instruction accordingly. Students are being given greater control of their own learning and this shows in terms of reduced discipline problems and improved learning,” said Mr. Smith.
In June 2011 Tarrant district and school leaders and lead teachers from each school made a commitment to take this work to the next level. After reading a short excerpt from a piece by Rick and Becky DuFour on professional learning communities, school and district leaders committed to establishing strong and vibrant communities of practice that will ensure that all teachers get the support they need to strengthen instruction and ensure that their students are well-prepared for the next steps in life.
According to Social Studies teacher Beth Sanders, “We at Tarrant have a vision, and we know where we want to go. The next step for us is to decide how we will get there. By creating purposeful communities of practice we hope to support each other in two ways: strengthening our instruction and continuing to work toward our common goal of preparing our students to be confident, critical-thinking, problem solvers who are well-prepared to enter this ever-changing, globally connected world and who can adapt to and address whatever challenges they face.”
There is much more to tell, but that will have to wait for another blog entry. What is clear is that while Tarrant is still a work in progress, district leaders and lead teachers are working hard to make the vision of a bright future for all their students a reality.
Click here to read Part 1
Click here to read Part 2
