Episode #2: 3 Ways to Create a Culture of Shared Learning

Each day in schools across America teachers and administrators are encountered with a steady stream of kids acting out for a variety reasons. Frequently they arrive in the office due to frustration on the end of the teacher and oftentimes the student as well. As the adults at the school there is a balance and a very delicate dance that must take place. The old adage of wearing many hats seems too cliche but it is a true statement. Students look to us to provide guidance and support. Teachers look to administrators to be the disciplinarians and hold kids accountable but ultimately for guidance and support.  And parents look to us to be fair and equitable, but also provide guidance and support for their students. So how do we balance all of these expectations without disappointing anyone in the process....let’s dig in. 

Creating a clear vision.  You might think it goes without saying that teachers, administrators, parents and students are all on the same page about the intention of a school, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Each person involved in the organization has their own perspective about how the school should be run, what the curriculum should look like, what is the most effective way to deliver instruction, what is an effective discipline policy. The list goes on and on. As a leader whether teacher or admin, our job is to take all of these perspectives and develop and align a clear vision. The foundation of this vision should always go back to how we service and support kids. Being an educational leader means you have to have the courage to make decisions that put kids first. This is not always easy, but it is the right work and it is the work that sets us apart. To cultivate a clear vision I recommend the following steps as an easy way to provide alignment between students, teachers, parents, and leadership. 

First, ask a simple question, what is the job of a school? Well, maybe that question isn’t so simple. I would recommend looking  into a few different buckets to help guide our vision. Of course academics! After all we are an educational institution, but recent research also shows that kids that aren’t taken care of will not  be ready to learn. This leads me to the next bucket, social/emotional well being.  I think I may hear your sigh from here, but hear me out.  Think back to a teacher that you had that made an impact on you.  Do you remember their awesome lecture on similes and metaphors? How about that amazing time they taught you about parallelograms? Nope.  How about how they made you feel? Teachers have been taking care of the social and emotional needs of kids as long as there have been teachers in classrooms. Although these needs may have shifted, and we may have found that there are more students in our classrooms that need that support than ever, it has always been a part of the best teachers classrooms.  So wouldn’t we want  to set up our schools to be the best? A great question to ask would be how do we take care of our kids social and emotional needs and what does it look like to have a healthy mind and body?  Honestly, this vision should not just be focused on our students but for all staff as well. Happy, healthy teachers, make happy healthy classrooms.  I read a book years ago called If You don’t Feed the Teachers they will Eat the Students: Guide to Success for Administrators and Teachers Isnt this the truth. We have to pour into all of the staff members in a school system from the district down. Teachers take on this work because we have a heart for our students, but if we are constantly put in positions where we are giving everything to them, and not being filled up, we will have nothing left to give. Teaching is not a sacrificial career, it should be fulfilling, and a part of that is making sure that we cultivate a culture of good people. 

So what does it mean to be a good person?  I don’t think we can underestimate the importance of teaching people how to be good people.  Some might say that it is not the teachers job to teach kids how to be good people, it’s the role of the parents. And, while that might be true, does it really hurt us? I mean think about it, is your classroom going to be a better place if the kids that are in are good people? Absolutely. So wouldn’t we want to take the time to cultivate that environment.  Wouldn’t we want to teach them things like honesty, integrity, responsibility and respect?  And what do those traits  look like to you versus what they look like to me? I think I would be hard pressed to find a teacher, really anybody that would not want to have a positive, and uplifting learning environment. So if this is what we expect, then we have to take the time to teach it. It’s very interesting to think that we put so many expectations on students yet we don’t model, explain, and practice those expectations.  

After you get  feedback from each group, including students, then across all areas find your ideas and themes that stand out. Throughout all of the discussion and time utilized, you have created a shared vision.  The ideas that resonate across all areas are the ones that take the forefront of your vision statement. Now I don’t know about you, but every school and district that I have ever worked in or for has a vision statement. So how do you transform that vision into reality? Marketing! If the foundation of your school is its vision, then you have to communicate it like it is going out of style. Creating a motto, and branding that make it sticky can help the vision to feel omnipresent. If one of the pieces of your vision is that students are academically prepared and maintaining high expectations, referring to them as scholars, supports the vision. And hold each other accountable, when we are not! We should speak of the children as if there parents were in the room. We have to be their cheerleaders. They are kids after all. And even our high school babies. They are just kids in bigger bodies. We want the vision of the school to be marketed the way that Mc Donald “I’m lovin’ it” slogan is, you just have to hear the three notes and it plays in your head. 

Okay, so now that we have our vision, how are we going to make all of this work happen. Many hands lighten the load. Lets make a plan and create actionable steps that each person in the organization can contribute to help everyone uphold the vision that was just developed. Whoa. That was a mouthful. But let’s be honest, a vision without a plan will get us nowhere. So we have to create systems that support our vision. Let’s start with academic. 

In order to create an academic environment that supports the learning of all students, alignment of curriculum must take place. The curriculum should be focused on a set of skills that kids need in order to be successful across multiple disciplines. Foundational reading, reading comprehension, number sense, math problem solving, and foundational writing in the elementary level. At the secondary level, and even upper elementary a shift from foundational skills to life long skills should occur. The common core standards have laid what this foundation should be through the ten anchor standards for English, the standards for mathematical practice, and the science and engineering practices. These standards teach students habits of mind. There is a great visual created years ago by NSTA that shows the overlap of these three areas, I will include it in the show notes.

Now, these standards are not typically the focus of the curriculum that we instruct for content in our classrooms day in and day out, but if we docs on these skills and teaching students how to learn any content, process that content and then communicate the information, they will be able to generalize it to any new content. Essentially any content that a teacher chooses could be used as a way to teach these essential skills for academic and professional success. So let’s look at the progression and teach the heck out of it.  All of these skills should be taught through engaging and curiosity driven lessons that allow students to explore, fail and learn. These essentials that are agreed on by each grade level, subject area or team are the must do’s.  These essentials not only have to have a horizontal connection but also vertical. Some great resources to look at what these progressions  look like include, the Tulare County ELA Progressions, Washington State Math Progression, and the NSTA Sponsored NGSS Science and Engineering Practices Progression.  The path that you choose and content that you focused on to teacher is up to you, but it should be the same for each grade level or content area in order to foster collaboration.  According to Hattie’s research, which if you haven’t read, seen or heard of Visible Teacher and Learning, check it out it is amazing. I have included the link to the guide in the show notes, but according to this reserach the number one predictor of increased student achievement is collective teacher efficacy. That is the teachers shared belief that all students can achieve at high levels. So how do you cultivate this expectation. . . .collaboration on best instructional practices. 

I am a HUGE advocate for quality instructional design and implementation.   Instruction is personal. It is the art of our profession. Let’s take a minute to reflect.  We all learn in different ways. Some of us can listen to a lecture, not take a minute of notes and retain the information, while others need to read, some need pictures, or sentence frames. It all depends on our independent learning styles and experiences.  There is also brain research on what instructional design and approach help students to solidify and retain their learning.  

 So how do we take a systematic approach to reaching each individual's needs. Well, we start with the understanding that not all students learn like us. If we take another minute to reflect on our teaching, does our classroom look and feel like what we experienced as a student?  Is it engaging our kids now? Are we enjoying the interaction that we are having with our students around the content, or are we leaving our classroom frustrated and disappointed with our students on the daily?  Our classrooms should not be designed around our needs, but instead designed around our students' needs. This could be a very overwhelming task. Differentiation isn’t easy, but if you utilize a set of 5 agreed upon instructional practices and set those systems up schoolwide you will support the learning of all students across the campus. Some things to consider when looking at instructional systems. Choose approaches that can be used across all curricular areas, for example, structured group collaboration, utilization of sentence frames to develop academic language, close reading routines.  All of these routines and practices can be the same across grade levels and there should be systematic  approach to their implementation. A part of this school wide system of instruction is providing in house professional development to support it. What this looks like is with your teams developing what your common language of instruction will be.  This means what are the practices that all of you want to see in every classroom and agreeing upon them collectively.  Have the instructional practices be broad like student collaboration, can help teachers to maintain their autonomy while still getting at the heart of engaging instruction.  This also allows teacher-led professional development, because as teachers try and implement new student collaborations strategies in their classroom, they can present them to their colleagues at staff meetings.  Training every teacher on the practices, and  then implementing systems where teachers observe other teachers on their campus implementing this instruction provides the most effective PD, this is a learning walk. Everyone knows when these walks are happening, and every teacher should participate and be observed.  The goal of these observations is to spark ideas, be collaborative, and spread the best practices and art of teaching across our school. What an amazing team building experience. No ego, no judgement, and a focus on positive and productive conversations about instruction. I’ll be creating another podcast to talk more about learning walks in a future episode, but having a culture of shared learning by the adults goes back to Hattie’s research. Collective teacher efficacy is the number 1 indicator of student growth and achievement.  

An important piece of any academic system is how we monitor student learning. Again when we look at the research formative assessment that informs our instruction has another of the biggest outcomes on student achievement. Now when we look at the way the public education system is designed, student achievement is measured based on the state assessment. In California, this CAASPP and it was designed by Smarter Balanced. When we take a deep dive into how the CAASPP assessment is designed the language of the assessment isn't necessarily aligned with exactly what the standard says.  Smarter Balanced has created targets, that bundle standards together, and then created evidence statements or learning objectives to define their interpretation of what each standard is asking for at a particular grade level.   To take a closer look at this check out The Smarter Balanced Content Explorer. I have included the l link in the resources section of the show notes. What the Smarter Balanced Content Explorer has done, is it has peeled back the layers of ambiguity surrounding the standards. You are able to click on a standard review of the evidence statements, which is just their way of saying learning objective, and then look at sample question stems and prompts.  Now I don’t know about you, but when I spend so much time prepping lessons and teaching my students and they are achieving on my assessments but then they go and take the state assessments and my best students are not meeting standards, its frustrating. This tool is a game changer. When you create the formative assessment for your classroom, utilizing similar language that the state is using will help to provide your student exposure to the rigor of what those assessments are asking.  Don’t get me wrong this is going to be very rigorous to start, but the goal is exposure.   Just like with alignment, and instruction, assessments should have a system. At the end of each of your agreed upon unit. All teachers in the content area should give the same assessment and then have a discussion on the best practice that resulted in improved student achievement.  Then brainstorm what can be done as in time support for the student that maybe just need a little more review of what was just taught. After all, we believe that student learning is continuous and on a growing cycle. Just because they didn’t learn it the first time around does not mean that it goes away. 

Now that the academic systems have been set up, let’s spend some time with systems to support social emotional learning. The groundwork in social emotional learning lies in the development of relationships with every person on the school site. The expectation should be that every person on this campus is treated with kindness, respect, and dignity. So how do you create a schoolwide system that upholds these ideas. You start with staff.  My friend Dr. Joelle Hood, is an amazing resource for all things social emotional learning.  Her facebook group is  The THRIVE Tribe definitely check it out. The whole premise behind social emotional learning is we have to build time into our schedule daily to take care of our physical, mental, social and emotional needs. This includes ourselves. So often as teachers, we put everyone else before us.  Systems to support this include morning meetings, mindfulness moments, and physical activity breaks. All of these set times contribute to the overall health and well being of every person on site. Putting this system into practice within the classroom, will then ripple to each part of the institution outside the classroom. You can provide support to parents through training, create groups during lunch and after school to support staff, and choose what things are important to you together. The bottom line is that every person should have a way to connect with others and feel supported. Again, the 3 go to systems are morning/class meetings, mindfulness moments, and integrating physical activity breaks.   Now you may be thinking where am I going to get this time, but I would encourage you to think of it as a deposit in the bank. Having these breaks will help to limit distractions during the times when you want your students to be focused on the content. 

Okay so let’s spend a little bit of time to talk about character. I see character in two distinct categories for elementary vs. secondary students. At the elementary level students should begin to learn about respect, kindness, honesty. In the lower grades TK-2, 10 traits can be taught. I am currently working on a TK-2 curriculum on teaching these 10 traits in the lower elementary classroom. Stay tuned. But for older students we add things like integrity, perseverance and motivation for a total of 20 traits directly taught throughout the school year. We are launching the first ever character development subscription box called Camp Character that is focused on 20 traits with daily lessons, data collection, and songs to enhance the learning of the assets. The box will include the learning materials for that month’s character traits, a class set of incentives that students can earn for exhibiitng those traits like pencils, and stickers, and then it will also include a fun teacher gift. I don’t know about you but I love school supplies, so you can expect to find some of those fabulous finds in the box.  Look out for mock ups of the boxes to come on social media soon. I can’t wait for ya’ll to see and hear your feedback. It’s so exciting. 

At the secondary level the shift comes to changing the internal dialog in kids heads. With social media having such a strong influence on our culture I struggle with not comparing myself to everyones instagram reel, or tik tok.  Our  students  are constantly  judging others and comparing themselves.  In theera of social media and all of the incredibly harming filters, no wonder there is an increase in anxiety, and depression for our kids.  On a personal note, my own daughter has dealt with some pretty severe bullying, kids throwing food at her, and barking at her, taking pictures of her and posting them with mean filters,  our students need to be taught that  putting other people down to  build you up will not make you feel better.  Instead  we want to empower our students and help them to have self worth, value, and kindness that is not dependent on others. #SELFIE the secondary curriculum is also on its way.  Whether you choose to use my resources, or others that you can find, the point is that we have to teach students what it means to have good character across different environments and interacting with different people, kids, teachers, adults, etc. How do we expect kids to learn things….we teach them. Character is no exception to this rule. 

Creating a school environment and culture that focuses on high academic expectations, and instruction, and character development and social emotional learning will help students to have more success in this rigorous learning environment.  Getting everyone on the same page is the first step in a truly transformative experience. So let’s get started. If you want more information on how you can transform your school follow us on social @thelearningprojectjenn on Instagram or you can visit us at www.learning-project.com to stay updated on all of our new and exciting happenings. 

And as a bonus to this episode I am providing a free resource to you. 200 Morning Meeting Questions related to the 20 different character traits taught in Camp Character. I have a secondary and an elementary version of this resource. Find it at www.learning-project.com/200

I hope that this episode has provided you with some strategies to inspire and motivate you. Happy Teaching!