Are
you vexed by student achievement data that doesn’t meet the muster? Get ready
for some exploration! Successful solutions require thorough investigation, and
that investigation works best as a collaborative activity. Your faculty will be
more likely to buy into the solution if they were on the answer exploration
expedition!
If
you’ve used protocols
for digging into the data, identifying
causes, and looking for the issues
underlying those causes, you’ve surfaced topics that are ripe for
exploration. The Chalk
Talk Protocol can come in handy again. Write topics that were identified as
underlying causes in the middle of a big sheet of bulletin board paper, one per
sheet. For example, your analysis may have revealed class schedules as a
potential underlying cause of low student achievement data. Write this topic in
the middle of the paper and do the same with the other possible causes that
have been uncovered. Teachers silently move from topic to topic, jotting down
thoughts, drawing arrows to connect similar ideas, and challenging ideas they
feel are problematic. This protocol allows for multiple perspectives to be
shared and all voices to be “heard.” It’s also efficient, since many
conversations are occurring at the same time. (Tip: Divide the number of
participants by 5 to get the # of sheets of paper that would work best. If you
have fewer topics than that, you can divide the group in two and have
duplicates of each topic. When groups are too large or too small, the written
conversation is not as fluent.) Give everyone a chance to visit every topic and
revisit to see where the conversation has gone. This process gets lots of possible
solutions on the table.
With
these possible solutions floating around in your heads, break into small groups and use the Peeling
the Onion Protocol to flesh out ideas. In each group, the “Keeper of the
Problem” poses the problem as it appears to them now. Other group members ask
clarifying questions, paraphrase the problem, explore underlying assumptions,
raise questions, and think about possible next steps.
Close
on the heels of this protocol, we talk with partners about what we’ve heard. I
like the Wagon
Wheels Protocol for this, and I structure specific questions for the
dialogues, with one question related to each of the topics listed during the Chalk
Talk. We include the “Going Deeper” step of the protocol, giving participants
one sticky note for each topic so that they can list their favorite idea.
By now
our thinking is really deep……and sometimes tooooooo broad. So we narrow our
potential solutions to the actionable using the Realms
of Concern/Realms of Influence protocol. For each topic, we place the
sticky notes we’ve generated in the right place on the target:
With
a clear delineation of which solutions are potentially within our reach, it’s
time to prioritize. Criteria used for sorting might be funding, time (Which
could be done by the end of the semester? By the end of the year?), etc. Once
we have our actionable list, we do a dot vote; each participant receives
a few garage-sale dot stickers and places them next to the solutions they
favor. The winners become the topic of discussion for focus groups, who meet
and flesh out these ideas. Groups present their proposals. The final step asks
for commitment. Participants reflect in writing about the difference they can
make in this problem. Then they commit vocally to one action. A time is set to
return and report.
The
process described over the past 4 blog posts is time-consuming and can be
condensed. Pick and choose those protocols that best fit your context, knowing
that time you invest up front in determining the right solutions reduces time wasted in unfruitful change.
This week, you might want to
take a look at:
Classroom organization
that supports collaboration:
Building
a class culture of respect:
Sorting student work to plan for
instructional next steps:
How-to Science Videos:
Empathy book clubs – teaching compassion
through books:
That’s it for this week. Happy
Coaching!
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